Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Only nine mares have won the Easter Cup in the past 70 years, but star reinsman Chris Voak is confident that four-year-old mare Taking The Miki can succeed in the $50,000 Garrard’s Horse And Hound Easter Cup at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Taking The Miki, winner of the WA Oaks last October, will start from barrier five on the front line in the 2503m standing-start group 3 feature — and Voak is planning to set the pace just like he did last Friday night when Taking The Miki romped to an easy all-the-way victory in a 2503m stand.
“She will pace away fine, and I hope to get to the front,” said Voak. “And if I do, I’ll rate her to win and make the main dangers Street Hawk and Hector, work at the right time.
“Last week Taking The Miki (who is trained by Jemma Hayman) improved in leaps and bounds on her first-up win (at Bunbury six days earlier). She felt a lot sharper and ran her final 2400m in 2min. 56.8sec. which is good going.”
Voak has happy memories of his win in the 2014 Easter Cup when Finbar Abbey, an eight-year-old metropolitan maiden performer trained by Ross Olivieri, raced wide early and in the breeze at various stages before finishing determinedly to beat the fast-finishing Polak by a neck.
The only mares to have won the Easter Cup in the past 70 years are Blue Mist (1953), Portree (1959), Color Glo (1967), Miss Dundee (1971), Wee Cent (1974), My Dianthus (1985), Via Valencia (1991), Party Date (2005) and Leap Of Faith (2021).
Champion trainers Greg and Skye Bond have won the Easter Cup with Assassinator (2017) and Mighty Conqueror (2019) and are pinning their faith in the richly-talented New Zealand-bred four-year-old Street Hawk, who will begin from the 10m line in his first appearance in a stand.
Street Hawk’s driver Deni Roberts said that she was pleased with the gelding’s performance in a standing-start trial at Pinjarra on Wednesday of last week. “He was safe and didn’t show any signs of missing away,” she said.
“So, that was promising, going into this race. But obviously it will be a little bit of a test because there’s a lot of normal stand horses in the race who get away quite fast. Street Hawk has got to get away safely, and then we will be part of it.
“On form, he is the best horse in the race, but you know how these stands can be. Taking The Miki was very impressive last Friday.”
Champion reinsman Chris Lewis has won the Easter Cup seven times, scoring with Pallaton (1980), Gold Rowan (1984), Village Kid (1987), Abmidas (1997), Party Date (2005), OK Windermere (2006) and Lovers Delight (2015), and he gives his drive American Bullitt a good each-way chance.
American Bullitt, trained by Sonia Zucchiatti, started from the No. 1 barrier on the front line last Friday when he trailed the pacemaker Taking The Miki and finished second to that mare in a 2503m stand. He will again start from the inside of the front line this week.
“We’ll be pushing to get the same sort of the run this week,” he said.