Teaz trio loom large in this week’s North Island meetings

The Ohaupo training partnership of Jason and Megan Teaz has been churning out the winners in 2022 and will look to continue on their impressive season at tomorrow night’s (Dec. 15) North Island harness racing meeting at Cambridge Raceway.

Having more than doubled their best season of winners in 2021 with 16 stable runners saluting the judge, it was always going to be a tough mark to eclipse. And despite a quiet start to the summer, the Teaz partnership is well within striking distance of eclipsing last year’s tally, currently sitting on 12 for the year with a couple of weeks remaining in the season.

Despite being just four wins shy and having a solid trio of runners across the two north island meetings this week, Jason Teaz wasn’t overly optimistic about his chances when asked whether they could achieve another milestone for the stable.

“I would love too, but we probably wont to be fair,” he said.

“It’s been another good season; we’ve been a bit quiet the last couple of months because we turned out most of our racing team because they had been racing all winter, so we’ve had a quiet start to the summer, to be honest. But hopefully, we will be back in business churning out the winners in the new year.

Not only did the Teaz stable double their previous best in terms of winners, but they also easily doubled their most number of starters in a season with 181 horses lining up in their name in 2021.

“We’ve had a bigger team and had a few more horses that we’ve had right from the early stages as yearlings, and they all came out at once. That’s certainly helped with the number of starters, and as a result, the winners have flowed more readily,” said Teaz.

“We’ve sold a couple of late, and we are just starting to build the racing team back up again. We are always working about 12 to 15 which is our normal and hopefully these numbers continue for the next few years or as long as we can.

“We break in most of our own racing team. We have quite a lot of rising yearlings so hopefully we have a bright future to look forward too with them. We also have five or six of racing age who will be starting to roll out over the next couple of months and we are looking to buy another couple as well, so hopefully the good run of results will continue,” he said.

Win number 13 for Jason and Megan could come in a hurry with a bit of luck in the second on the card at Cambridge Raceway tomorrow night with Hellofasportstar looking well placed in his second up run after a spell.

The talented four-year-old son of Sportswriter had a few tricks to him early in his career, but Hellofapsortstar looks to have turned the corner and matured mentally as he has gotten more race day experience and comes into tomorrow night’s assignment on the back of a run that had second up all over it.

HELLOFASPORTSTAR MAIDEN WIN 

“I was hoping he would win last start at Cambridge,” said Teaz

“We had Mark (Hurrell) up to drive him, but he got shifted into the higher-class race which made it pretty tough for a two-win horse, so I thought he handled himself really well. They went 2:39 and he was fresh up with only a couple of trials under his belt, but nothing beats race day fitness. I thought he was really good, he got into a bit of a tricky spot, but he has learnt a lot.

“It wasn’t that long ago he was heading to places like Otaki for a trip away because he was quite green and a bit of a problem horse. He was in front by three or four lengths their and run off the track coming down the straight. To see him going round now and racing properly and coping with being on the fence and being able to handle himself, it’s quite pleasing really because I was quite worried early on in his career, he was going to be a rogue forever, but he has seemingly settled down a lot,” he said.

Despite being crossed in his last start from barrier two, Hellofasportstar has shown himself to have plenty of firepower to cross and land handy having done so on six occasions when presented with a front-line barrier. That could prove crucial over the sprint trip at Cambridge tomorrow night.

“That was what we wanted to do last time but it sort of didn’t work out for us. He got crossed by a couple of quick horses so it probably wasn’t quite unexpected but obviously tomorrow being 1700m I would like to see him press forward but he does start outside a couple of horses who do get off the gate quite quick,” said Teaz.

“I’m a little bit nervous about that but over the short distance he has to go forward and hopefully the respect factor will be there and if he found the markers, he would be pretty hard to beat I would say,” he said.

The son of Sportswriter is the tenth and final foal out of Badlands Hanover mare, Millwood Bette, a close relative to the likes of Ohoka Arizona. Her foals have been bred and raced by Tony Amstrong with five of them winners, including three six figure earners headlined by the G3 Newcastle Cup winner, Hawthornden (Grinfromeartoear).

“Tony breeds and races all of his stock. He has been racking up the winners and has been a big part of our stable over the last couple of years and out success has gone hand in hand to some degree. When we’ve been kicking goals, so has he and I think he’s bred over 300 winners now which is a great effort breeding only four or five a year and he’s a huge component of our stable,” said Teaz.

The second of the Teaz runners at Cambridge Raceway tomorrow night is the five-year-old son of Betterthancheddar in Piiki Whara. He finds himself back on his home turf after a mishap in his last start at Manawatu saw him spending a couple of weeks recuperating from a nasty cut sustained as a result of a check in the running.

“He is the sort of horse who doesn’t have much luck really and if things go wrong, it invariably involved him. He had to have a couple of weeks off after his last start because he got checked and ended up cutting his foot quite badly, so we had to chuck him out down to the grazing block for a couple of weeks to let him get over it,” said Teaz.

“He has come back in and up quite quick, he went to the paddock very very fit, so it wasn’t hard to get him ready for this. He hasn’t trialed or anything so what he does tomorrow night he will no doubt improve on, but I thought it was a pretty good race to start out in because there isn’t a lot of form and hopefully being on the fresh side, that will benefit him a little bit.

“He is drawn quite nicely and ran third behind Miki Montana about 6 or 7 starts ago which was the last time he really drew well. He’s a different horse from a good draw, he likes to be up on the pace and when he gets back in the field, he can lack a bit of interest so hopefully tomorrow night he will looking to be pressing forward, and that is why I went with Andre Poutama being an aggressive driver who will hopefully get him nice and handy. We expect him to be in for quite a nice Christmas as a horse who does improve with racing,” he said.

Rounding out the Teaz runners for the week will be the stable favourite, Brookie’s Jaffa (Auckland Reactor), who finds himself dropping back in grade a touch after some super runs against the best pacers the North Island has to offer. The nine-win pacer lines up at Alexandra Park in the fourth on the card drawn one the second row over 2200m.

“He is well and he’s just a great horse. I wish I had a whole stable full of horses like him. He’s just an honest horse who gives his best all the time and is probably a little bit underrated. Hes dropping back a bit in class this week which is good having taken on the likes of Copy That and Hot & Treacherous and he’s been running on great. A couple starts ago he was probably a bit stiff and could have gone very close to Copy That had he got out earlier.

“It’s going to be a bit tricky tomorrow being drawn one the second row, usually when he draws down there, he follows out one without much gate speed, but tomorrow he follows out Charlie Brown who I don’t know a lot about in terms of his speed off the arm. It makes me a little bit nervous because he has been four or five back on the fence lately which has made it next to impossible for him. So as long as he isn’t buried deep on the markers, I think he will give it a good shake, but I do think Chimichurri will win the race. As long as we get a crack at them, I think Jaffa will be running on,” he said.

Teaz has booked Oamaru’s most eligible bachelor, Brad Williamson, for the drive behind the son of Auckland Reactor and with any luck looks to be the biggest threat to the Stonewall runner and likely favourite.

For complete Cambridge race fields, click here.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink