Racing: Despite its prestige, the Hunter is just business

It is a strange but understandable habit among horse trainers - falling in love with a race.

Even the world's best do it, getting infatuated with one race above all else, an infatuation that only grows once they have achieved their goal.

The money and the prestige often don't matter.

Some trainers just have to be part of a certain race every year and they are willing to sacrifice everything for that familiar buzz.

Some do it for sense of achievement and the fame, the chance to be king of a race.

Think Brian Hancock and the Interdominions.

Or Bart Cummings and the Melbourne Cup, although by winning 11 cups Bart got to the stage where he was just showing off.

And many do it out of a sense of history.

Most New Zealand harness trainers have an infatuation with the New Zealand Trotting Cup even though there are many Australasian races worth more.

So you could understand if Tim Butt has wanted to win Saturday's Hunter Cup all season.

After all, this is the race last season where Mister D G gave Butt the biggest pacing win of his training career.

It is a race his grandfather, Derek Jones' champion mare Blossom Lady twice won in stunning fashion.

It is a race Butt went so close to winning with Happy Asset and Pocket Me, a race he even toyed with starting champion trotter Lyell Creek in.

You can see why the Hunter Cup has become Tim Butt's race.

Well, maybe not.

"Mister D G is only here because the owners wanted him to be," said Butt matter-of-factly this week.

"I would have been quite happy to miss this race and to have taken him to Perth in January instead.

"I would love to win it again but it wouldn't have worried me if we had missed it."

And in those few sentences Butt sums up why he has streaked toward the top of the New Zealand training ranks.

Why he, along with Geoff Small, leads the charge of the young guns shaking up the industry.

Butt wants to win the A$450,000 Hunter Cup about as much as he wants to win any other big race. He wants to win them all.

Having grown up in Canterbury with a family full of New Zealand Cup winners he should feel unfulfilled until he wins the Addington classic, right?

Wrong again. Butt is even trying to talk Mister D G's owners into missing next season's New Zealand Cup.

He hopes he will win the Cup one day but to him training horses is about getting the best out of each one and if that means thinking outside of the square then Butt is happy to live there.

"Don't get me wrong, I think he can win on Saturday," said Butt.

"But he is going to need a lot of luck because of the standing start conditions and the fact he is off a 10m handicap.

"I'll be honest, if I had this season over again I'd do things differently.

"I have started him in races like the New Zealand and Auckland Cups and the Miracle Mile which he probably couldn't win.

"Yet just about every other time in the last year he has started in a mobile he has won or finished second.

"So next season I might miss a lot of those standing start races and stick to what he is best at, mobile racing, a lot of it in Australia."

Mister D G's chances of defending his Hunter Cup title took a minor blow on Tuesday when he drew the inside of the two unruly starting positions on the 10m mark.

It may not sound like a big deal but for a horse who rarely steps quickly he adds to a difficult task, especially as the Hunter Cup can become a traffic nightmare.

So Butt is hoping for a repeat of last season's race-winning pleasant surprise when Mister D G made a flyer from his unruly mark and settled fourth.

"If he can step well we know he can win because he is as good as anything in the race apart from Elsu.

"But the Hunter Cup is one race where you need luck because they go hard and don't hand up their positions as easily as in the New Zealand Cup."

Maybe if Mister D G, at pre-post odds of 12-1, can pull another Hunter Cup miracle Butt will start to fall in love with the race.

But until then, it is business.

Hunter defence

* Mister D G is back to defend the Hunter Cup he won last season.

* Evenn though he is racing well he is paying $13 with bookies.

* Trainer Tim Butt says the standing start conditions do not ideally suit the Canterbury pacer.