It is the optical illusion that can trick even the most hardened of punters.
You see two horses with the same colours, like Snazzytavi and Bella Waters in today’s $175,000 Cal Isuzu Stakes at Te Rapa, and automatically think they are stablemates.
The two high-class mares are trained by different stables, yet race in the same colours as both are owned by Brendan and Jo Lindsay of Cambridge Stud.
When you are in the horse breeding and selling business, sharing the horses you own around between different trainers is one of the best ways to reward clients and build relationships.
But just how many trainers the Lindsays have horses with may stun you.
That is a staggering number, even for the Lindsays, who five minutes earlier – before Brendan started counting – thought the number “might be around 20″.
Even more remarkable considering the Lindsays have plenty of their New Zealand horses with retained trainer Lance Noble, who has had enormous success for them in recent years.
But Lindsay, the man who built, owned and then sold plastics giant Sistema, says spreading his racing team is smart business.
“As a stud we want to reward trainers who buy, or even try to buy, off us,” he explains.
“It is good business, but also a great way of building those relationships and getting to know different trainers and how they work.” That also means a lot of correspondence for the Lindsays and their racing boss Henry Plumtree because rather than one report from one trainer they are dealing with 31.
“I love it,” says Lindsay. “The communication is so much better than it was 10 years ago.
“I particularly like the videos. Like so many other owners we get those sent straight to our phones and I really enjoy watching how our horses here and in Australia are doing.
Racehorse Snazzytavi in action. Photo / Kenton Wright Race Images
“I love being informed and knowing how they are going and to watch them progressing. Even the bad news, I’d rather know it than not know it, and trainers have got so much better with their communication.”
These days, the Lindsays get more good news than bad, with Snazzytavi the latest in an army of high-class racemares who will eventually join the broodmare band headed by their queen, Probabeel.
A last-start winner of the Livamol Classic and unbeaten at Te Rapa, Snazzytavi has trialled beautifully since and is the one to beat today even though the Group 2 is a stepping stone to the race the Lindsays want to win even more, the Zabeel Classic at Ellerslie on Boxing Day.
“That is a race we’d love to win because we have been sponsoring it for a while and obviously it has such close links to the stud.”
Bella Waters may not have as many gears as Snazzytavi, few horses do, but she is from a developing family and is trained by Moira and Kieran Murdoch, who trained the Lindsays' first Group 1 winner Marky Mark.
The Cal Isuzu is the highest-rated race on a strong card at Te Rapa, with classy two- and three-year-old races to kick off the programme, while the J Swap (1400m) is always an important summer sprint pointer.
The SkyCity Hamilton Waikato Cup brings together an even field of stayers and in true handicap Cups fashion has a $5.50 favourite in The Odyssey, with the long run from the 2400m start point helping to negate his wide barrier draw somewhat.
The TAB mover has been Sassy Lass for the in-form Wexford Stables, who has a good record at Te Rapa and gets Warren Kennedy onboard. She would be an even better chance with any give in the track.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
