 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2010
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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Within a day or two, Stylish Monarch will be on his way to Richard Brosnan's place. Murray Tapper has sent him north with Samantha Ottley, and the next time he sees him will probably be on May 7, the night of the Rowe Cup. "Richard has won more races than I'll ever train," said Tapper. "Depending on what happens, I'll have no need to go up until the day of the race," he said.
Tapper trains New Zealand's best current trotter from Pleasant Point, inland from Timaru and just minutes from where Brosnan became one of New Zealand's training icons. He will be caretaking the new top dog because that is where Stylish Monarch is, following his decisive win over Braig and the rising star I Can Doosit in the $80,000 Gary Thompson/ Fred Shaw NZ Trotting Championship last Friday night.
While Stylish Monarch set his own terms in front after starting from the pole, the best of the opposition thinned itself out - Musgrove galloped early, I Can Doosit lost ground and got well back, and Springbank Richard returned with the offside tyre off it's rim. The school of open class trotters has gradually become alarmingly light and Stylish Monarch is suddenly out of the intermediate grade, in the best and at the top of it.
For one quite so young and yet to leave home, it will be a new experience and he will face a formidable challenge with the arrival at the Rowe Cup carnival of the much-travelled Australian star, Sundon's Gift. Tapper said Stylish Monarch - the winner of 11 of his 23 starts - will have three starts in Auckland.
This rapid rise to the top for Stylish Monarch does not surprise Tapper, who just four years ago left the safety of regular pay at the freezing works to take on the more chancey one of a horse trainer. He was not moving into new ground. His father Peter was training in Gore when he won the 1958 New Brighton Cup with East Dome. The family later moved to Pleasant Point where Peter ran a drapery shop and trained a small team. One of them was Family Fun, who had one start before joining Clem Scott's stable and winning six races.
His son was keen. He drove at the annual gymkhana around the local golf course, and recalled the visits of Manaroa and No Response. Murray was employed in his youth by Eric Ryan, Terry McMillan and David Gaffaney, and recalled that Ryan won 18 races in one season while he was there and Viva Remero was one of the many nice horses he had at the time. His first driving win was with Time Bandit at Waikouaiti, and the first of his eight training wins with the classy trotter Syndication was at Roxburgh. Then Zesty showed up and won five. "It was about then that a number of people asked if I would train a horse for them, so after being at the Works for eighteen years, I left."
In reality the career change was not as good as it looks now. "I had a horror start, for the first couple of seasons. I was going terrible. The horses had a virus, and I was wondering why I had left the Works." But Domination, who has won seven, came to the party and the arrival of Stylish Monarch soon put paid to any lingering thoughts like that. "Right from the start he was a proper professional, and he just has the ringcraft."
Tapper and driver Ricky May - who won four races on the night - were a little concerned how he would perform from one off the mobile, so for a lap of the prelim May sat him on the gate. Braig tried hard up the passing lane and for a moment, near the eighty metres, gave the look of one about to succeed. But Stylish Monarch was pulling away at the finish.
Former stablemate Duplication, now in Canada, was a good sale out of the stable, and younger ones showing promise are a 2-year-old brother to Jasmyn's Gift and a Monarchy close relation to Stylish Monarch.
Credit: Mike Grainger writing in HRWeekly 14Apr10