Greene duo to make most of MAAT races

[Wandering Eyes]

David Greene is taking a good opportunity to run his last start winners Goldiluxe (NZ) (Ghibellines) and Toa Haka (NZ) (Iffraaj) in MAAT grade at Cambridge Synthetic on Wednesday.

The Te Rapa horseman journeyed north to Ruakaka in search of better track conditions for Goldiluxe last start and the trip paid off, with her clearing maiden ranks by a comfortable margin in early May.

Coming off a short freshen-up, the Ghibellines mare will contest the Martin Collins New Zealand MAAT 1300 with Sam Spratt retaining the ride.

“She’d obviously been knocking on the door of clearing maidens for a while there, so it was good to finish the job off and she did it with a bit of style,” Greene said.

“She looks like a mare who can carry on with it.”

A rising five-year-old, Goldiluxe has been lightly-raced with just five starts under her belt to date.

“She’s a lease horse and her breeder-owner had left her in the paddock for 12 months before organising what she would do. He’s stayed in the ownership and we’ve put together a group to race her on lease,” Greene said.

“She had a little freshen-up after her win at Ruakaka, so this race mapped out well with the special conditions. We thought we would resume here, and there’s another race at Ruakaka in the middle of August that we’ll look to go back up north for.

“She’s not really one to handle an off track, so we’ve got to look for those better surfaces for her.”

Consistency also paid off for stablemate Toa Haka at Cambridge in mid-May, capping off a string of placings with a runaway success over the sprint distance of 970m. The son of Iffraaj is the second foal out of talented race mare Rasa Lila, who contrastingly picked up Group honours over a mile to 2000m. 

Toa Haka will be the sole race-winner of the eight-horse field in the Martin Collins New Zealand MAAT 970 on Wednesday.

“He had run quite a few placings at 1200 metres, where he hit a wall very late,” Greene said.

“You’re never quite sure if those types of horses just keep doing that, but getting a turnover that 1000m sort of distance, he was very strong the whole way which was good.

“To get another opportunity to run in that sort of grade and distance, he looks a nice chance.”

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