Racing: Oz provides NZ year's highlights

Australia's best up-and-coming jockey is our own James McDonald and the best 3-year-old Australia saw last year is Cambridge's It's A Dundeel. Photo / Getty Images

In reviewing the year and the year-ending Ellerslie carnival we need to be thankful for Australia being so close.

You may not like it, but New Zealand's highlights occurred in Australia and that's not about to change.

Australia's leading trainer was a Kiwi - Chris Waller.

Australia's best jockey is a New Zealander - Jim Cassidy.

Their best up-and-coming jockey is our own James McDonald.

And close enough to their best up-and-coming trainer is also ours - Bjorn Baker.

Not a bad clean-up really.

And if we wanted to go back just a tad longer, the best 3-year-old Australia saw last year is Cambridge's It's A Dundeel.

The revamped two-day Ellerslie carnival threw out the certainty that there are plenty more stars emerging to not only keep the home fires alight, but to look forward to Australian campaigns with.

Show The World, Rising Romance and Lucia Valentina are 3-year-olds capable of Australian warfare and it will be extremely interesting to see how Eclipse Stakes winner Vinny Eagle gets on in the Inglis Classic sales series race in mid-January.

Only the best of our juveniles are capable of measuring up to the Australians, but Vinny Eagle looks pretty exceptional.

The $100,000 Championship Stakes winner Show The World is still a big goof, but he has unlimited untapped potential. He could be quite freakish. It would seem like the right thing for the horse that co-trainer Murray Baker is of a mind to evade the Derby at Ellerslie in favour of the A$2 million ($2.17 million) AJC Derby in Sydney. Not only does that allow more development time, it steers away from a taxing two derbies in the one campaign.

The Baker stable has already produced two Victoria Derby winners, two AJC Derby victors and a second in an AJC Derby.

And speaking of stables, nothing has run hotter all season than the Tony Pike/Mark Donoghue stable. On January 1 they got the Eclipse with Vinny Eagle, Chintz got a deserved victory in the $100,000 Rich Hill and Waterford beat all but Bounding in the $200,000 Railway where the rain-affected footing counted against her.

Rising Romance did a very professional job of taking the $100,000 Royal Stakes, holding out Lucia Valentina. Rising Romance is a go-forward type and can only get better. Rider Leith Innes felt Lucia Valentina would have won the Royal Stakes had it not rained and it's clear her fall in the Eight Carat Stakes on Boxing Day did her no favours.

There is no doubt she is exceptional and the strong finishing sprint she can muster will make her very competitive in the strongest Australian company.

Bounding was fabulous in taking the Railway, racing at least three horse widths away from the rail. Sprinter/metric milers are not easy to tackle the Aussies with and, coupled with that, her fizzy mindset may not cope too well with a big Australian occasion. There are plenty of opportunities here for her.

The inexperienced Hera showed she was on the upward spiral with her Eight Carat victory and Puccini was quite remarkable taking the Great Northern Guineas after being five wide in mid-field in the middle stages.

For a country once renowned for producing dour stayers, our ranks in that area have never been thinner. James McDonald gave Mosquito a huge plug as a coming distance horse when he got him home to win the City Of Auckland Cup by a whisker, immediately encouraging co-trainer Donna Logan to aim at the Auckland Cup in March..

You could not fail to mention the $200,000 Zabeel Classic victory by the remarkable Historian and the great form being shown by his trainer Gary Alton. Historian's legs are so bad he should not be racing, but Alton has worked magic to pick up two group ones with the horse.

And there are those in the wings looking at the Sydney autumn carnival. Silent Achiever is certainly one of them.