Campionessa harnesses the spirit of Romantic Warrior before the G1 Livamol Classic

Friday, 11 October 2024 by Jason Tan

Campionessa wins at Te Rapa. Photo from Te Akau Racing.

Campionessa harnesses the spirit of Romantic Warrior before the G1 Livamol Classic

You won’t think CAMPIONESSA has much in common with global thoroughbred star, Romantic Warrior but maybe her preparation for the Livamol Classic could have some parallels drawn to the Hong Kong champion.

CAMPIONESSA will attack Saturday’s Group 1 over 2000m having had very limited racing this preparation, in fact you could look at her program and think that she’s had five ‘trials’ to get her peaking for the Hawke’s Bay feature held in Hamilton.

It’s a bit factious to say her fresh run over 1400m at Ellerslie (where she ran a creditable 2^nd ) was a trial, but the reality was she carried a clear top-weight, drew a soft barrier and only had to sprint 450m to the line off a very soft lead speed.

Matamata saw more exertion required, but she wasn’t a serious winning hope dropping back to 1300m against some talented sprinters, again conceding 6kg to the two best chances. She did her work well to the line again though… sneakily so.

It just isn’t in the style of many New Zealand trainers to prep a horse for a 2000m contest without ‘race miles’ in their legs. They love taking them through a 1400m, 1600m path (the distances of first two legs of the Hawke’s Bay series) before having them ‘fit enough’ for a “mile and a quarter” in the Imperial.

But CAMPIONESSA won’t have raced or trailed beyond 1400m before the Livamol this time in. On Tuesday her final major piece of work was a home track hit out, just to ‘clear her pipes’ in a 1200m trial.

I doubt the style of prep that Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson have taken CAMPIONESSA on has been as meticulously planned as Danny Shum getting Romantic Warrior ready for his last two Group 1 campaigns with trials and track gallops. Not disparaging the Kiwi pair, but by their own admission it’s more been forced by wet weather and race meetings being abandoned.

That said, one gets the feeling they think they’ve done what’s required for the quality mare to be forward enough to deliver close to her best.

It won’t need to be in the league of a Romantic Warrior performance, but a CAMPIONESSA win will be a triumph of training a class horse to do what they do best, run faster than the rest.

Here's who to look out for in NZ 👀#GetOn pic.twitter.com/kxazKpV1RL

— Get On (@GetOn78) October 10, 2024

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