 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2011
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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Stylish Monarch turned the tables on Inter-Dominion hero I Can Doosit when the pair met again in last Saturday night's $80,000 Garry Thompson/ Fred Shaw NZ Trotting Championship at Addington.
Stylish Monarch blazed to the front from his wide draw in the 2600m Group 1 event, and in all fairness I Can Doosit had every chance to run him down after receiving an economical trip on the outer. But when it came to the crunch, I Can Doosit couldn't, falling short by half a head as the clock stopped at 3:16.4.
"It's developing into a pretty good rivalry," said Stylish Monarch's trainer Murray Tapper. "And there isn't much between them. I Can Doosit's probably got a bit more acceleration, but my horse is a touch more consistent. If you look at the big three trotting races over the last year - the Rowe Cup, the Dominion Handicap and the Inter-Dominion Final - he's won one of them and been placed in the other two; no other horse has been in the finish of all three. His consistency is unbelievable."
Saturday's victory gave Stylish Monarch back-to-back wins in the NZ Trotting Championship for Tapper and the gelding's owner Anne Patterson, having won the corresponding event in early April last year when he defeated Braig and I Can Doosit in the slightly quicker time of 3:15.9. "I think he could go 3:14 if you asked him to," Tapper said. "And I said to Ricky (May) afterwards that it looked like I Can Doosit had headed him up the straight, but he said our horse was still working up to top speed."
Once the field for Saturday night's event was finalised, Tapper compared it to a line-up of rugby players. "There was a lot of Division One players, but really only two or three All Blacks," he said. "And because I reckoned we had the best horse in it, I thought we should drive him like it; not necessarily lead, but get ahead of most of them. Any wins a good win, and any Group 1 win is special - so is this horse I think."
Stylish Monarch is set to return north now for the Rowe Cup on Friday week, an event he'll go into without another lead-up race but that doesn't worry his trainer. Following that, the Monarchy gelding will have a three to four-week spell as the first focus for the new season centres around defending his Dominion Handicap title in November.
Then the small-time Timaru trainer with a big-time horse will break new ground and head to Australia with his star trotter - something he would've never imagined himself doing before Stylish Monarch came along. "Prior to him, I never had a horse good enough to even take to the North Island, let alone across the Tasman," Tapper said. "But he loves travelling as much as I do, and you always know he's going to do his best. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he'll trot all the way too."
Credit: John Robinson writing in HRWeekly 28Apr2011