By MICHAEL GUERIN
Winning the Rowe Cup will be easy compared with the punishing battle Lyell Creek won yesterday.
Tomorrow night the champion trotter has to give the best squaregaiters in Australasia a 15m headstart to win Auckland's richest trot.
In front of him will start two past Interdominion winners, including one who has footed it with the world's best trotters in Europe, the defending Rowe Cup champion and the national mile record holder.
That is only the start of Lyell Creek's problems. His handicap and the capacity field means he will be at least three wide at some stage of the gruelling marathon, losing valuable lengths on every bend.
His domination of an entire season also guarantees every driver in the race will be waiting for Anthony Butt to make his move on the champ. Butt will expect no favours.
And when he almost certainly hits the lead Lyell Creek will be carrying the weight of history. No horse has won trotting's Triple Crown. No trotter has ever been so dominant, compiling an unbeaten season with arrogance.
To win tomorrow night Lyell Creek will surely have to be the best. Not just the best now, the best New Zealand trotter ever.
He is.
That is not my opinion. I don't really deserve an opinion on this because to me most of the great trotters of the past exist only in photos or on crackly film clips.
They are unicorns, mythical equines of whom great stories are told but whose deeds remain shrouded in mystery.
My list of best trotters contains horses like Scotch Notch, David Moss, Call Me Now and Pride Of Petite. Champions but hardly a definitive list of our trotting heritage.
There are of course people who did see the greats of the past but that is where a problem always arises.
When you talk to the old masters they always give you the same answer.
"It is hard to compare horses of different eras," they say.
Until now.
Because Lyell Creek has won the toughest battle of them all. He has won the right to be called our best trotter ever.
Not by me. By people who have earned a right to have an opinion, hard judges in a hard industry.
First stop Roy Purdon. Trained the winner of every big race ever run, prolific sire of champion horseman, all-round racing legend.
"Lyell Creek is the best I have seen," he says without reservation.
"He really is wonderful to watch. There have been some great trotters in the past but no horse could win all the time, no matter where he was in the running, against the best on both sides of the Tasman in just 20 starts."
"He has a great attitude and a great will to win and he wins them ridiculously easily. He is the best."
Okay. Pick the phone up after dropping it on the floor and try somebody else.
Peter Wolfenden. Aha, always a tough nut to crack. Men who start their careers training Cardigan Bay are notoriously hard to impress. Especially when they have also won all the great races a couple of times or more.
"He is the best I've seen," said Wolfenden in a stating-the-obvious sort of tone.
"He has to be. I drove some good horses to win the Rowe Cup but they had to be put in the right place to win. It won't matter where Lyell Creek is put. He is just too good.
"Staying, sprinting, here or Australia it doesn't seem to worry him."
Wolfenden says there is no way to explain how Lyell Creek got to be standing on this mountain top.
"He is a fluke. Horses like him are just born that way," he adds.
Peter Wolfenden would know. Of course that may not have been Peter Wolfenden on the phone. Maybe an alien life-form has taken over his body because I have never heard Peter Wolfenden talk about a horse like that before.
To complete this incomparable season tomorrow night Lyell Creek is going to have to be tough, so lets talk tough.
Trotters don't come any tougher than Idle Scott. He holds the New Zealand record of 46 career wins. He won a Rowe Cup, was still winning when he was just about old enough to vote. That was after he broke a leg as a 10-year-old and came back to beat the best of his era as a 12-year-old.
His trainer-driver David Gibbons has had a few horses almost as good during a career when he has rarely been without an open class trotter. He knows trotters better than most people know their television remote.
"There have been some great trotters over the years but he would be as good if not better than any of them," said Gibbons yesterday.
"It doesn't seem to worry him where in the field he has to race or what distance the race is over. He is too tough for them.
"Horses like Scotch Notch and Scotch Tar had great speed but Lyell Creek has got it all."
Strike three. The Creek really is a Freak.
But wait. If Lyell Creek really is New Zealand's best ever then nothing is surer than the Australians think they have produced one better.
And there is nothing Australian trotting lovers enjoy more than telling you exactly how good Maori's Idol (that's a strange name for an Aussie horse) was.
Maori's Idol was a freak. A machine. Make no mistake. And when arguments over the greats trotters of the past start the Aussies always condense their case to one single point.
Maori's Idol was so dominant at one stage of his career he took on the open class pacers, running second in the race now known as the Queensland Pacing Championship. A trotter beating top class pacers. Now that takes some beating.
Which brings us to the man behind Lyell Creek, trainer Tim Butt and a throwaway comment made after yet another Lyell Creek record at Alexandra Park last Friday night.
"I knew he could sprint like that because he beat Happy Asset in trackwork during the week," said Butt.
Yes, the same Happy Asset who won the Auckland Cup three months ago, ran second in the Hunter Cup and then finished third from the outside of the front line in the Interdominion Grand Final last month.
Lyell Creek last week beat that Happy Asset.
You won't get rich backing Lyell Creek in the Rowe Cup tomorrow night, but just watching the best ever will be priceless.
Racing: Freak wins greatest battle of them all
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