Kingman to bypass Kilmore Cup after weekend drama

By Adam Hamilton 

IRT New Zealand Cup winner Kingman has earned a week off after enduring a “scary” ordeal before his fighting second to Leap To Fame in last Saturday night’s Cranbourne Cup.

Trainer-driver Luke McCarthy confirmed the five-year-old would bypass Saturday night’s $150,000 Group 1 Kilmore Cup and go straight to the $250,000 Group 1 Hunter Cup a week later.

“That’s the silver lining from a scary incident which could have been catastrophic,” he said.

“If he’d won at Cranbourne, he’d have been going for the $1 million bonus and we’d really have to have run at Kilmore.

“Now, after four runs in as many weeks and what he went through Saturday night, he gets a week off.

“I’m sure he’ll be right at his absolute best for the Hunter Cup.”

Just hours before the Cranbourne Cup, the float transporting Kingman and star stablemates Eye Keep Smiling and Steno from Shepparton to Cranbourne burst into flames.

Fortunately, just moments before, the horses had been pulled from the float on the side of the Hume Highway.

The float was engulfed in flames, completely destroyed and the Hume Highway closed to traffic.

“We’re still not exactly sure what it was,” McCarthy said.

“Nathan (Jack) and I were driving along and heard a long bang. We thought it was a puncture so pulled over and then we saw smoke coming out everywhere.

“Then I saw some flames and said to Nathan ‘quick, we’ve gotta get the horses out’.

“Just minutes after we got all four horses out, the whole thing went up in flames.

“I’ve never been involved in anything like it before and I’m sure I never will again.

“It was scary and could have been catastrophic.”

McCarthy, Jack and the four horses were stranded on the side of the freeway for almost an hour.

“An old guy who lived nearby and saw the smoke, drove around to us in his big old horse float and offered to take us back to his place with the horses,” he said,

“I told him they were racehorses and all racing in a few hours at Cranbourne, so he said just take the float and bring it back when you’re finished with it.

“He was just amazing. I drove the float back to him today. It’s the oldest float you’d see but it did the job.

“The first thing was getting the horses to a safer place than the side of a freeway and without him, we’d never have made the races in time.

“That upside of scary moments is like this is how you see the good things come out in people.”

Kingman, winner of the Group 1 NZ and Victoria Cups late last year, led and ran a close second to champion Leap To Fame in track record time.

Eye Keep Smiling, Australia’s top race mare, ran second to the emerging Captains Mistress in track record time in the Group 3 Angelique.

“You can’t believe they raced, let alone ran so well, after what they’d been through,” McCarthy said.

“It was confronting enough for Nathan and I, let alone the horses.”