KEY POINTS:
Comparing any New Zealand trotter with Lyell Creek borders on racing blasphemy.
After all, Lyell won over $3 million and beat some of the greatest trotters in the world. He is, quite simply, the Cardigan Bay of his gait.
So to say a former punters' enemy named Stig who has yet to win a major open class race could be the next Lyell Creek leaves you open to ridicule.
Unless of course the comparison comes from Mr Trotting himself, Phil Williamson, in which it is not a statement but a coronation.
Williamson not only trains reigning trotter of the year One Over Kenny but recent open class stars Allegro Agitato and Jasmyn's Gift as well as last season's Harness Jewels winner Springbank Richard.
Last term he set a record for trotting winners trained in New Zealand and being an unassuming bloke from Oamaru he is not exactly known for flashy statements.
Until he you ask him about Stig, who in the last two weeks has gone from being promising to being the promised one.
He sat three wide before crushing Allegro Agitato in the Flying Mile at Ashburton last week and followed that nifty trick by being the only horse to come from off the pace all day in near-national record time at Kaikoura on Monday.
Williamson, waiting in the wings with One Over Kenny, is shaking his head.
"He is the next Lyell Creek," he says. "Horses just don't do what he has been doing in the last couple of weeks and he is only a five-year-old.
"I don't know how we are going to beat him."
The really scary part for Williamson and fellow trainers is that Stig is still a mental midget.
He has only had 21 starts, winning just eight of them as it took trainer Paul Nairn six months to work him out.
Nairn only inherited Stig, named after champion Swedish trainer Stig Johanssen, after the gelding's owner Tim Butt got tired of his wayward behaviour.
"Tim knew he could trot but he was doing things wrong," said Nairn.
Butt is himself one of our greatest ever trainers of trotters, having steered the careers of Lyell Creek and Take A Moment.
So when Butt couldn't get Stig going Nairn knew he faced an imposing task.
So what do you do with a trotter who can't trot? Make him pace.
"Just a year ago I had him pulling the big heavy work cart around here wearing the hopples," reveals Nairn.
"I put them on and made him pace because sometimes the trotters hate the hopples so much when you ask them to trot again they behave a little better."
In Stig's case the con job worked, but only after some more convincing.
Stig preferred another gait - galloping - in his early starts last December and only left maidens in February.
Just four months later, though, he won the Harness Jewels four-year-old division and this season has rocketed to another level.
"It is a bit surprising really, he seems to have a few gears other horses don't," said Nairn.
Now how Nairn even manufactured that sentence is a miracle.
This is, after all, New Zealand's answer to the man from Snowy River. Nairn trains just eight horses, which takes him all day, and when he travels with them he sleeps in the stable.
He is not the sort of man who talks about horses "having more gears".
But he knows plenty about great trotters.
He trained 1995 Interdominion champion Call Me Now, and last year's Rowe Cup winner Inspire.
He doesn't like comparing horses but if you annoy him long enough he will offer this:
"I suppose he could be as good as Call Me Now, but he still has a bit to prove to get there," said Nairn.
He will get his chance to stake that claim at the New Zealand Cup carnival after which Nairn faces a new challenge.
"I usually work my horses right-handed a fair bit to get them ready for Alexandra Park but this fella took so much organising just to get him going I didn't risk it.
"But after the Cup carnival I had better have a crack at it because I suppose he will go to Auckland."
Then the Interdominions in Melbourne beckon on the track where Lyell Creek won the final in 2000.
Stig has a long way to go to be as good as Call Me Now.
And he might have to go around the world to be rated as good as Lyell Creek.
But in Tim Butt, Phil Williamson and Paul Nairn he has some elite cheerleaders.
