"It's like the Sires' Stakes here. You have to be in early to make yourself eligible and, being a January 8 foal, I knew she could go. You can't die wondering, I suppose."
What about the two-year-old pacing filly who was so good she travelled to the other side of the world to take on the best of her age... and beat them?
We watched and followed as the small but stacked, late-foaled filly Under Cover Lover flew to Canada and North America for their biggest and best two-year-old races back in the mid to late 90s.
In The Pocket had arrived.
Action TV was here.
And the racing world was wide open to watch and explore!
Under Cover Lover was born for this.
She was a "Northern Hemisphere Time Foal", landing in January rather than the usual late spring or early summer months, meaning she was officially two years old in both harness racing worlds.
Her breeder, Graham Pearson, had a mission in mind all along as it turned out. To take on the world from down under.
The plan dropped into place when his filly smashed all and sundry during her first season of racing.
While another son of ITP, Christian Cullen, was pumping the boys, the girls couldn't really keep up with UCL either!
Behind the scenes, Pearson had been engineering his expedition. He'd staked Under Cover Lover for all the classics in North America a year out.
"It's like the Sires' Stakes here. You have to be in early to make yourself eligible and, being a January 8 foal, I knew she could go. You can't die wondering, I suppose."
The challenge, experience and trip was becoming a reality, but it was a big ask.
Instead of staying home and dominating, you pack everyone and your fast horse onto a plane in time for the northern autumn and winter and head off to race horses running times you can only imagine.
Really?!
Rather than rely on the locals, Pearson even convinced his go-to driver, Anthony Butt, he should renew his passport and take the reins across the way rather than stay home for another relaxing summer of racing and the Cup carnival.
But as New Zealanders know from our sporting history, this sort of thing, usually reserved for folk heroes like Cardy, Quinn and Petite Evander, is always doable...
"The Canadians were encouraging and polite, but also suggested we'd picked a bad year to come given the quality of their two-year-old filly crop," recalled Pearson on an episode of Standard Bred a few years back.
Watch Episode here.
So, of course, despite those odds and the searing hot competition in the Canadian cold, Team Under Cover Kiwi flew the flag high with placings and a win in their biggest of stakes races eh...
Anthony Butt liked it enough that he took on an even bigger trip with Lyell Creek not long after.
An inspired Robert Famularo sent his NHT colt Bartolomeo and won the Nassagawaya Stakes, a Canadian Classic for two year old pacers, at the now replaced Woodbine Entertainment Park.
It opened the eyes and minds of fans down here to what was on offer up there.
And now look.
We know, see and study the monster races every North American Summer.
The performances and pedigrees of the world's best are copy-pasted into our computer hard drives, and Dexter Dunn plies his trade with no peer at almost every carnival.
Under Cover Lover.
Graham Pearson.
Anthony Butt.
True trailblazing.
That's what that was.
The first DB Fillies Final was run at Auckland in 1979 and won by a thoughtfully named grey filly, Dawn Mist.
It was the biggest, but by no means the only, feature win among the 12 victories she recorded during her career.
She was no 'light shower' back in her day, that's for sure!
In her wake after that first-ever final, worth $17,035 at Alexandra Park, multiple Group and Cups performer Phillipa Frost, Northern Oaks winner Speedy Girl, and, needing no embellishment whatsoever, Bonnie's Chance, who somehow finished last!
Not the series' original champion filly by design perhaps, but don't worry. Ardent fans would tell you that the best in the history of the race was up next...
And in their defence, it was some era of champions.
Bandy in front, built at the back end, owned and trained by Brent Smith, a self-acknowledged beginner who banked on a wise horseman, Bob Negus, for dream results.
Breaking track records and rewriting record books wasn't the expectation.
It was simply in her blood.
By Nevele R Stud's exciting young sire then, Timely Knight, she was also the daughter of glamour mare Ar Miss... winner of the Sapling Stakes and New Zealand Oaks, no less.
But Armalight almost seemed determined to be better than her mother throughout her three-year-old season.
Win.
Win.
Win.
The Northern Oaks.
The New Zealand Oaks.
The DB Fillies Final.
The Triple Crown Classic.
On and on it went, having begun with a winning debut at the Westport Trots on Boxing Day, 1979.
A couple of summers later, when Armalight and Bob Negus leaned for home seven lengths clear of the 1981 New Zealand Cup field, the chasers included Bonnie's Chance, Hands Down and Gammalite.
It was the beginning of a season later dubbed The Year of the Mares.
A season dominated through the deeds of Armalight, Hilarious Guest, Delightful Lady and Bonnie's Chance, who tied a ribbon around the era by winning the 1982 New Zealand Cup, also by seven lengths, from... you guessed it... a traffic-jammed Armalight.
Hard to believe, but it isn't the New Zealand Cup that makes Armalight legendary.
It's her time warping win of the 1981 NZ Pacing Free For All three days later.
Not even because she outclassed the same who's who field for a second time that week. Great horses have done that before and since.
No.
It was what happened when the time was announced.
When Reon Murtha read out the official result, there was a stunned silence.
A genuine moment of disbelief.
"Did he say 2.23 point something? Can't be...
Must've misheard that."
That was the reaction of squeezed in racegoers scribbling results into their books, waiting for the inevitable correction.
There was no new calculation just confirmation.
2000 metres in 2:23.5.
Officially.
A mile rate of 1:55.4.
In New Zealand.
In 1981?!
A record by more than 3 seconds....
Watching two-time Sires' Stakes champion Captains Mistress glide over this year's Carnival will undoubtedly feel a little extra-terrestrial.
It won't be the first time Cup Week has left people wondering what they just witnessed though.
There's a new headspace needed for this series final.
The race run on Cup Day for two-year-old male pacers has a history cluttered with sensational contests between three-year-olds.
Since harness racing shifted the Standardbred birthday to January 1 in 2022, it hits a little differently.
Funny thing is, if that hadn't happened, it'd still be the same horses running on Cup Day...
Maybe there just isn't enough history behind 'the new' yet.
That considered, we can't contest the quality of the horses who've won it so far.
Don't Stop Dreaming preserved a long 'Purdon' dominance first up in 2022.
In fact, the only outlier among the first seven home that year was Alta Meteor, who ran third for a freshly minted Telfer-Stonewall operation somewhere near Swannanoa at the time...
Then came Chase A Dream.
Not ultimately an all-time great, but his performance in year two of the two year olds had all and sundry thinking he was destined to follow in the hoofprints of some very famous stablemates.
There was a nose.
Then another nose.
Then a head.
Then another nose.
A finish that left fans shaking their heads trying to make sense of what they'd just seen.
How had the boisterous, blisteringly fast colt come from virtually last at the 600 metres and still won?
When Marketplace downed Got The Chocolates in 2024, we'd quickly reset to normal transmission of the downright terrific.
Everyone knows one of them...
No, both of them...
Can win a New Zealand Cup over the next couple of years regardless of who comes across the Tasman.
Freeze Frame and action!...
He may never be the star of the show either, but his courage and the drama surrounding Freeze Frame's his win last year is already etched into Sires' Stakes folklore, whether you like the reviews or not.
On a classicly fine and fast Cup Day, the purists had left their premium pay perches expecting to watch harness racing's next potential superstar take another giant stride.
Their juggernaut was Jumal.
But the hardened support cast and competition had other ideas.
The bold-running star got caught up and outnumbered in the fight for early supremacy.
Just as he'd fought off the first wave, the next arrived.
And this wasn't a movie where the hero wins.
It had become Mission Impossible on a race track.
Jumal went down swinging and didn't claim the Cup Week Sires' Stakes crown.
Jumal isn't the only battered hero to have that happen.
Future dual New Zealand Cup winner Copy That blazed home from last in 2019, only to be denied by a pixel as One Dream dashed up the passing lane.
The triple New Zealand Cup champion Terror To Love never looked likely to find the Sires' Stakes podium in 2010 when raceday luck deserted him and a worthy Gold Ace prevailed.
Even Changeover, the 2007 New Zealand Cup king, won the NRM Sires' Stakes Final in 2006 only to be disqualified months later, with Fergiemack entering the annuls of....
Whether there's a future champion lurking in this year's Woodlands Stud Sires' Stakes Final remains to be seen but this new-look event is already making its own history.
Win, lose or draw.
