Harness racing royalty is en route to Invercargill for the richest horse race ever to be held in the city.
The Invercargill Harness Racing Club will on Saturday host its first Group I race with $100,000 in stakes up for grabs. It’s the first time $100k has been offered up for horse race in Invercargill.
That stake money has lured some New Zealand harness racing stars south. Included is the Mark Purdon/Hayden Cullen-trained Spankem who finished third in November’s New Zealand Trotting Cup.
Stablemate Self Assured, who won the 2020 New Zealand Cup, is another in the nine-horse field.
This Saturday’s race meeting might not attract the same sort of spectator hype that the Christmas at the Races thoroughbred meeting did at Ascot Park seven days earlier, but Invercargill Harness Racing president Craig Heyrick was still expecting a good crowd.
“We’ve had some absolute champions line up here on several occasions, but we’ve never had a Group 1 in Southland before.”
On top of the $100,000 prize pool is a chance for the winning owners, driver, and trainer to get their hands – for a short time at least – on the unique Invercargill Cup.
The trophy was first awarded as the New Zealand Trotting Cup 106 years ago when Invercargill businessman John Bruce Thomson’s horse Cathedral Chimes won the New Zealand Trotting Cup race.
At that point, the winners each year were allowed to keep the New Zealand Trotting Cup. The 1916 Cup was later repurposed and put up as the Invercargill Cup.
Up until 2010 it would each year head home with the winning connections and be returned for the next Invercargill Cup meeting the following year.
However, that changed when it was taken to a jeweller for cleaning.
The jeweller revealed the Cup – believed to made of silver – was probably valued somewhere close to $100,000.
It now spends most of the year locked away securely and is brought out for the Invercargill Cup race day meeting before again being safely secured.
In a matter of coincidence, just a couple of months after the first-ever $100,000 horse race will be held in Invercargill on Saturday, there will be a second $100,000 horse race in February.
Saturday’s 10-race meeting is a twilight event with the first race at 4.19pm and the last at 8.49pm.
The 3200m Invercargill Cup will step at 7.29pm.
The race was initially set as a free-for-all event but the Invercargill Racing Club lobbied for it to be a handicap race.
Spankem and Self Assured will start off 20m.
Southland connections Macandrew Aviator, trained by Kirstin Green, Robyn’s Playboy, out of Ross and Chris Wilson’s stable, and Nathan Williamson’s Sand Wave will all line up in the 2022 Invercargill Cup.
