Ashburton bits and pieces

The Ashburton Trotting Club hosts it’s biggest harness racing stakes day on Monday with a record $385,000 up for grabs and two Group Three and two Group Two races on the card.

Of the last ten Ashburton Flying Stakes Mark Purdon has won eight. In all as a trainer he’s won eleven Ashburton Flying Stakes with the first being Young Rufus in 2002.

Muscle Mountain is looking to create a record that’s unlikely to ever be broken – winning the Ashburton Trotters Sprint four times. A handful of horses have won the feature twice but he’s the only one to win three editions.

In the sixty eight year history of the Flying Stakes only thirteen horses that have won have gone on to win the New Zealand Cup, Lazarus in 2017 being the last.

The current race record for the Trotters Sprint of 1-59.3 for the 1700 metres is held by the 2021 winner Muscle Mountain while the current race record for the Ashburton Flying Stakes of 2-54.2 belongs to 2018 winner Eamon Maguire.

If co-trainer Barry Purdon wins the Flying Stakes with Merlin, it’ll be 25 years since his last win with Holmes DG in 1999. Holmes DG went on to run second in the New Zealand Cup that year, beaten by Homin Hosed by a nose.

Eight horses that have won the Ashburton Trotters Sprint have gone on to win the Dominion Handicap in the same year. Tobago in 1989, Lyell Creek 2000, Take A Moment 2002, Take A Moment 2003, Whatsundermykilt 2006, Stig 2008, Springbank Richard 2009 and Monbet 2016.

Kayleen McCormick drove the winner of the first Hambletonian in 1986 when she reined the Beven Heron trained Dancing Armbro. The only other female driver to win the three year old trotting feature was Natalie Rasmussen with Prince Fearless twenty nine years later.

In the thirty four year history of the Ashburton Trotters Sprint six year olds have won the race twelve times, seven year olds nine, five year olds five, eight year olds four and four, nine and ten year olds just once each.

There are a number of siblings racing in the feature races on Monday: Don’t Stop Dreaming (Flying Stakes) and Dreams Are Free (Sophomore), Captains Mistress (Sires’s Stakes Fillies) and Merlin (Flying Stakes) and Republican Party (Flying Stakes) and Advance Party (Ladies Sprint).

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink