KEY POINTS:
If there's a better training performance all season than Kevin Gray's at Riccarton on Saturday, we want to know about it.
Gray won the $325,000 New Zealand Bloodstock 1000 Guineas - a tough 1600m - with Daffodil who hadn't run beyond 1200m.
That is an extraordinarily difficult feat
to achieve.
Gray, 71 - but don't tell him he's in the twilight of his career - plays down his effort.
That's probably because he was always supremely confident he could do it and that comes from his innate knowledge of stockmanship.
The modern-day horse trainer is well versed in what is required from a thoroughbred, but fewer and fewer are coming from a background as stockmen.
Kevin Gray spent most of his life working stock until his great friend Brian Deacon, who died last week, helped him take out a full public trainer's licence.
Like, when as a young man he and another youth drove 2500 sheep from Gisborne to Patea - 19 weeks on the road.
He spent three-and-a-half years as a shepherd on a major sheep ranch up the Wanganui river, then 25 years as the stock agent for what was then Farmers Org in Hawera.
Gray was breaking in horses for the likes of Brian Deacon and Wally McEwan and dabbled in ownership.
The best horse he has either trained or owned, Copper Belt, raced in his colours, but was trained for him by Brian Deacon.
In an era of outstanding horses, Copper Belt won 23-and-a-half races from 53 starts and retired sound after weight got the better of him. His stakemoney of around $150,000 in the 1970s would have been three or four times that today and probably three times more than that again had the horse been in an era when they travelled frequently to Australia.
When Brian Deacon moved from Taranaki to Takanini around 1980, Gray took out a full licence and has rarely been without a good horse.
Or a good apprentice.
Hayden Tinsley, who rode Daffodil at Riccarton on Saturday, appropriately learned his trade in the Gray stable.
So did Bruce Herd, Damon Smith, Kim Clapperton, Lisa Allpress, Jason Symes and Eddie Lamb.
There is something fatherly about Kevin Gray and clearly that's an honourable element that has worked its way through to his apprentices.
There is huge respect for him from those who have dealt with him.
"All of my former apprentices send me a Christmas card or call me and I'm very proud of that."
Kevin Gray might not have shown it publicly, but he had some very sad private moments at Riccarton on Saturday, remembering his great mate Brian Deacon.
"Deac and I were very close mates and he did a lot for me.
"One thing I'm very glad about is that he passed away well."
In Daffodil he can apply all the things he learned from Brian Deacon, from his years as a stockman and from his own 28 years of fulltime training.
He applied them to Legs a few years ago with devastating effect.
Legs won the Oaks in mid-summer and came back out in the spring of the same year and won the Kelt Capital Stakes.
"I rate this filly every bit as good as Legs and she was top class."
That's looked to be the case as Daffodil finished off her semi-classic races of the early spring then dashed past the older horses to win at her final outing before Riccarton.
She gets her head down like a true stayer and should get even better when she gets up over a middle distance.
The Oaks next year begs.
The 1000 Guineas turned out to be what everyone expected - a two-horse race.
Juice put it to Daffodil when Leith Innes cut her loose at 220m. Innes had momentarily trapped Daffodil behind the leader La Etoile and it might have been interesting had he decided to sit there and pocket the other filly for almost the length of the home straight.
But Daffodil won with such authority that she would still have got there if Tinsley had been required to ease her out of the pocket and go around the back of Juice.
Awesome Planet finished bravely into third, cutting La Etoile out of the important placing in the last bound.
It was a massively brave effort by La Etoile, after doing a lot of work to get to the front after 600m.
