Three of the heavyweights of New Zealand racing have gathered to plan their assault on the Melbourne Spring Racing carnival.
Sydney based trainer Chris Waller, Cambridge trainer Murray Baker and Waikato ex-pat Jockey James McDonald joined forces to help promote the 2018 TAB campaign ‘Kiwi’s for the Cup’.
The trio have won nearly 170 of Australasia’s most prestigious races between them - but so far the greatest prize in racing - the Melbourne Cup - has eluded them.
From small town New Zealand, Chris Waller is the star of Australian Racing and the genius behind the World’s greatest racehorse, Winx.
He’s won three Cox Plates and been has crowned the most successful trainer in New South Wales for eight seasons in a row.
Based in Cambridge, Murray Baker has won a total of 48 Australasian Group One races, including a Caulfield Cup with Mongolian Khan in 2015, while he also prepared 1990 Melbourne Cup runner-up The Phantom.
Like Baker, James McDonald came within a whisker of winning the race that stops a nation when second on Fiorente in 2012.
Fiorente returned to win the Melbourne Cup 12 months later, with Damien Oliver in the saddle.
Now 26, McDonald is among the greatest jockeys this country has produced, and with more than 34 of Australasia’s elite-level races under his belt, McDonald is hot property on the Spring Carnival Scene.
This group of proud Kiwi’s are the stars of the TAB’s 2018 Kiwi’s for the cup campaign.
They’ll take on the Aussies in the Caulfield Cup on Saturday 20 October, the Cox Plate on Saturday 27 October and the big one at Flemington on Tuesday 6 November.
Last year more than a million bets and $10.2 million was placed on the Melbourne Cup, making it the single biggest one off event on the New Zealand TAB’s sporting calendar.
