Dixons happy as Larry with Leap To Fame's NZ Cup win

By Michael Guerin

Exclamation marks don’t come much bigger.

Because the one Leap To Fame stamped on this twilight of his career in the $800,000 Go Media New Zealand Cup on Tuesday will be emblazoned into the Addington track for as long as there is harness racing.

The great Australian pacer went into our most important race with nothing left to prove but one more thing to win: The Cup.

The horse they call Larry was already one of the all-time greats of pacing, his body of work ensuring he can one day have a commercial stud career but more importantly a place in the hearts of tens of thousands.

But the New Zealand Cup is the one that matters.

Other wonderful races, like the Inter Dominions and Miracle Miles are special, but the Cup is the one unmovable monument of harness racing, the race they hasn’t changed because it hasn’t needed to.

Leap To Fame’s trainer-driver Grant Dixon, who in reality trains the champion stallion with wife Trista, knows that.

“This is the race you grow up watching and this is the one we wanted to win,” said Dixon.

But there is winning and then there is what Leap To Fame did in this New Zealand Cup.

He lost the battle for the early lead to older half brother Swayzee and Dixon moved straight to the parked position, knowing he was then going to spend three minutes covering more ground than the two-time winner of the NZ Cup inside him and with New Zealand’s fastest horse Marketplace sitting on his back.

The glorious seven-year-old stallion was now both the hunter and the hunted so Dixon reached for the most damaging weapon he could find: Leap To Fame’s heart.

He started to work over Swayzee down the back straight and had him off the bit through relentless pressure, bullying the bully.

At the top of the Addington straight Leap To Fame had Swayzee beaten but the pack smelt blood, knowing the champ had to be vulnerable.

First Tact McLeod launched to his inside threatening the greatest upset in NZ Cup history but more worryingly Marketplace, pacing’s young lion was sitting on his  back, young fresh legs ready to attack the King and take his place at the head of the pride.

Marketplace wobbled this way and that and then flew at Leap To Fame but in a career approaching 100 starts very few horses have run past the champ and Marketplace became the latest to come up short.

It is the fourth straight year an Australian has won the New Zealand Cup yet you won’t hear one person who loves harness racing, a great horse or any form of special athlete complain. Kiwi or not.

Because Leap To Fame isn’t a Queenslander or an Aussie or even just a racehorse any more.

He is now woven into the DNA of any true racing fan who has seen him and especially those lucky enough to witness him shine through this rare Addington Cup Day gloom.

He has entered the realm of the champions people talk about when they discuss their greatest.

For some he will be the greatest, their version of what other people saw in Frankel, Secretariat, Winx or New Zealand’s imcomparable pacing legend Cardigan Bay.

But Leap To Fame is of course not finished, spreading his unique spell of joy and awe for maybe another nine months and he could even be back at Addington on Friday.

But what happens now, next month or in his finale at his hometown Inter Dominions next July, matters little if at all.

Leap To Fame has already won everything that matter and now he has won the one that really matters.

And he won it like only he could. The horse who wouldn’t task no for an answer.

The pacing hero who went where others simply can’t go and emerged as happy as Larry.