La Crique reprises a Tancred formula from a previous era

New Zealand stables once ambushed the Tancred Stakes with precision like few other Australian Group 1 races during a golden era for Kiwi-trained stayers.

What started as a trickle of winners in the 1970s turned into a torrent over the next decade and continued with the same results into the early 1990s.

They were almost indomitable: true heavyweights of the Australasian staying ranks such as Bonecrusher, Our Poetic Prince, Apollo Eleven and My Blue Denim ruled the Tancred.

Then all of a sudden the rivers paved with Australian weight-for-age gold as a bounty for carefully planned New Zealand raids stopped running.

After 1994, there wasn’t a Kiwi-trained winner of the race until Roger James’ high-class mare Silent Achiever surged through the heavy conditions in 2014.

What transpired during the two decades between Miltak winning for Dave O’Sullivan and Silent Achiever defeating her compatriot Dundeel, perhaps best illustrates the difference in fortunes and philosophies of the thoroughbred industry in Australia and New Zealand.

As prize money dipped in New Zealand, more than ever Kiwi trainers, owners and breeders turned to selling their best bloodstock.

New Zealand had always been fertile ground for Australian buyers but competition emerged from Asia, creating another outlet that drained the talent pool.

And despite the growing interest from Hong Kong and other Asian jurisdictions, Australian stables’ appetite for horses with stamina-enriched bloodlines from New Zealand – and more recently the northern hemisphere – never waned as a means of counteracting a domestic breeding industry push towards speed.

New Zealand pedigrees continue to have a huge influence in Australia’s staying races like the Tancred: it’s just that the trainers who travelled their horses here such as Murray Baker, John Wheeler etcetera are from a bygone era.

And now that expatriate horsemen like Chris Waller, Mark Walker and Baker’s son Bjorn are entrenched in the Australian system, owners are finding it easier to relocate a horse of genuine substance to a stable that is both identifiable and successful.

Since Silent Achiever’s success, only seven New Zealand-trained horses have contested the Tancred.

The pickings have been slim with two minor placegetters in Rondinella (2019) and The Chosen One (2022) and there hasn’t been a runner from our Tasman neighbours for the past two years.

But there is one trainer who will be trying to recapture past New Zealand glories when one of the country’s best-performed mares over the past decade takes up the challenge at Rosehill on Saturday.

La Crique has arrived in Sydney in fine fettle and in a patch of form with four successive Group 1 placings during the New Zealand summer that has left her co-trainer Katrina Alexander in awe of her consistency rather than frustrated with a series of close calls.

As a six-year-old with a pedigree and attitude that gives every indication she will continue to train on for at least another season, La Crique will contest one of the strongest Tancreds in recent years.

She does so having escaped the clutches of Australian bloodstock agents during the early part of a career that included her luckless runner-up finish in the New Zealand Derby.

“There certainly have been offers along the way, especially during her three-year-old year,” Alexander said.

La Crique is raced by long-term stable clients John and Jan Cassin who like to dabble in breeding, hence their reluctance to part with the mare.

“The Cassins have never had any intention to sell so she has been trained for longevity from the get-go and she has been getting better and better with age,” Alexander said.

“They are small breeders, La Crique is a homebred, they love their racing and they invest a lot into the industry in a range of different ways such as pinhooking.”

Besides, Alexander insists it has always been difficult to put a value on La Crique at any given time because she was never regarded as a “sales yearling” and the progeny of Vadamos respond best to a patient approach. 

“I’ve got quite a few (Vadamos progeny) in the stable, and I really enjoy training them. But they are quirky horses, and they do definitely need time,” she said.

“I think from four-year-old onwards is when you see the best of them and a mare like La Crique is only really just hitting her straps.”

But Alexander knows that her stable star needs to go to another level in a race likely to be run in testing conditions.

La Crique will be up against the UK’s proven traveller Dubai Honour, Yulong’s northern hemisphere imports Zarir and River Of Stars and this season’s Caulfield Cup winner Duke De Sessa.

There’s also a new-look Vauban to contend with after the two-time Melbourne Cup runner for Irish trainer Willie Mullins took an instant liking to Australian weight-for-age racing with a first-up Ranvet Stakes victory for Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott.

“She had a lot of little niggly issues through one part of one full season but I don’t think there has ever been a season where she hasn’t delivered at Group level,” Alexander said.

“And like the season we’re currently in, she’s just come up against an older gelding (in El Vencedor) that’s really copped the racing.

“But she’s turned into a very tough mare who always loves a dogfight, she always gives 110 per cent.”

Alexander trains in partnership with her husband Simon and while there have been cameo appearances for La Crique in Melbourne and Brisbane in past seasons, the Tancred represents a walk down memory lane for the stable.

In 2003, Alexander campaigned Honor Babe in Sydney and the mare’s Sydney Cup victory stands as the last time a New Zealand-trained horse won the race.

On the score of comparison, Alexander says La Crique holds a narrow decision after compiling a record that includes nine wins and 13 placings in 25 starts for almost $1.8 million in stakes.

“They are not dissimilar in many ways but La Crique is just a higher-class animal,” she said.