KEY POINTS:
Sir Slick just loves treading water and breaking his rivals' hearts.
And those are connected, if you ask trainer Graeme Nicholson and equine therapist Jane Bennett.
Sir Slick's transformation from good average racehorse to superstar tough guy with nearly $500,000 in earnings has coincided with his regime at
Bennett's underwater equine treadmill at Te Aroha.
In the past two decades, equine swimming pools have been a regular feature of training for some horses, but Bennett has New Zealand's only underwater treadmill and she says it does a completely different job to swimming.
She calls it a power walker and makes a remarkable claim on its behalf - that it can lengthen a horse's stride.
"It utilises all muscles and corrects muscle mass, which lengths a stride."
One of the key factors is the raising and lowering of the walking platform, and therefore the water level, to take the exact amount of pressure off each individual horse's weight, reducing the stress on the legs during work.
"It takes weight off the joints and the shins and there is no other way of giving a horse work like this.
"Horses working on a track turn in one direction all the time which is why some of them cannot race in the opposite direction - this machine sorts that out by adjusting the muscle mass."
The speed of the treadmill and the time in the water is altered to suit each horse's fitness level.
Bennett spends much of her day travelling around visiting racehorses to apply her equine therapy, encompassing everything from bone to muscle - acupuncture, stretching and skeletal manipulation.
She's worked on some of the best, including last year's Derby winner Wahid, Kristov and Wellington Cup winner Willy Smith.
"I used to ride against Mark Todd as a kid, now I'm treating his horses," she says.
"I've seen so many sore horses that it brought back to me the things I'd heard about underwater treadmills in England and the United States.
"I didn't actually see one when I was working in England, but I worked for several people who had used them and they swore by them."
Bennett could have imported one from the United States for US$70,000 ($102,000) but decided to design her own, employing a South Island engineer.
Nicholson is a convert and no one can dispute that Sir Slick's form turnaround since he started using the treadmill for this campaign has been stunning.
Bennett is sure the treadmill can build endurance and Sir Slick has been so hardy he has achieved the near impossible, winning $493,650 racing solely in New Zealand and with only the Thorndon Mile victory last start as a major stake.
He has a chance to add a further $93,750 in today's $150,000 Whakanui Stud International Stakes at Te Rapa.
Nicholson and Bennett know Sir Slick loves his turn in the water.
"I swear you could untie him from the truck and he'd put himself into the machine," says Bennett.
Nicholson says Sir Slick ticks over better than most.
"Because he's been racing at 1600m I've been putting him on the treadmill twice a week.
"Because this week's race is 2000m I've decided on three times. When I put him on the truck the third time and closed the door I could hear him rumbling around - he was saying: 'hang on, we've already done our two trips this week'.
"He knows."
Sir Slick's run-them-into-the-ground front-running tactics have broken more than one heart.
However others describe it, Bennett calls it endurance.
