 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2010
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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Prior to Cup Week this year, Monkey King was like a lot of other horses in the record books of the elite.
He'd won a New Zealand Cup, and a Free-For-All, but put himself in pretty select company by doing both in the one season last year - not to mention adding an Auckland Cup and the Miracle Mile to his Horse of the Year season of 2009/10. But now he's claimed a piece of history that may never be repeated again, because he's done the 'double-double'.
Monkey King's dual Cup Week successes in consecutive years are an amazing achievement, and no amount of accolades that he's received or praise he's been showered with in the interim are unbefitting to the little black pacer from Dancingonmoonlight Farm who's known affectionately as 'Sam'. Quite simply, he's turned out to be one of the greatest pacers this country's ever produced. If not the greatest.
Sam's trainer Benny Hill admitted to being "pretty nervous" on the morning of Show Day this time around. "The Cup was a bit different because we'd been there and done it already, but after winning that and having a chance to do the double again, that's when I felt it," he said. "We were pretty happy to do it once, and never dreamed that we could repeat last year. I suppose I put the pressure on myself though - that's part of my job."
Hill thought Monkey King might've been a sitting duck in front in the $200,000 Group 1 Woodlands NZ Free-For-All, but in the end he didn't need reminding that it's usually his pacer that zooms home past the opposition - not the other way round.
For the 8-year-old's now regular driver Ricky May, who's partnered Monkey King in 23 of his 38 career victories and tallied up nearly $2.7 million in stakes while sitting behind him, he never stops being astonished. "I don't know where he gets all his 'muscle' from,"May said, shaking his head as Monkey King was led away for a wash after the Free-For-All. "He's a very clever little horse. He dropped the bit down the back today when Lance (Justice, on Smoken Up) was up alongside him. I almost had to scrub him up - but he just knew it wasn't time to get serious yet. Round the home turn when Lance stared yelling at his horse, that's when Monkey grabbed the bit again and took off."
May was the star driver on the big stage during Addington's glamour carnival, as he also won the Dominion with Stylish Monarch and snared a unique double of his own. "It's been an unbelievable week. You can never not be confident with Monkey, but he needed everything to go his way to win the Cup; in the end it didn't, but he still won."
May will join forces with Monkey King again at the end of next week, when they'll be shooting for their second consecutive Miracle Mile title across the Tasman. With what we've just witnessed over Cup Week, who says they can't put another one of those in the 'CV' again as well?
Looking way down the track to next year's Cup carnival in Christchurch, Hill says all going well he'll be back again with Sam - which means the rest of us could be reaching for those record book one more time. Australia might well have their Inter-Dominion freal Blacks A Fake - but we've got the 'Monkey'. "Age will catch up with him someday," Hill says matter-of-factly. It's just a case of looking after him. But we'll be trying, for sure."
Credit: John Robinson writing in HRWeekly 17Nov2010