Mr Love big in Banks Peninsula Cup

By Mike Love

Big targets lie ahead for yesterday's stand-out winner of the Group 3 Tactical Approach D G Jones Banks Peninsula Cup at Motukarara.

Mr Love, bred and raced by the Hopes, produced a scintillating finish to secure his ninth win in just 20 starts.

Greg Hope bred the son of Love You, and owns and co-trains him in partnership with wife Nina. Yesterday the five-year-old gelding was also driven by son Ben. He began safely from the front line to settle four back the fence initially. Mr Love was then shuffled five back and third last at the top of the straight with Hope angling sharply wide before straightening up and going boom to just get the win right on the line from Eurostyle by a head.

“He’s a super wee horse. He’s won almost half of his races so that just shows the quality of him,” Greg Hope said in a post race interview.

“He’s got high speed. It was just a matter of cuddling him up and having one run at them.”

“We’ve had a lot of trouble with tie-up with him. When he’s right, he’s really right. Nina works night and day on him to try and get his muscles right.”

Meanwhile Ben Hope was not surprised by the head-turning effort of the winner.

“His last two starts might have put some people off but he wasn’t right. It’s been a great effort to get him right,” Ben Hope said, "I do think the grass agreed with him. The whole breed do like the grass. He felt super and to come from where he did was a super effort by the horse.”

Mr Love has now won over $115,000 in prize money. It was just Ben Hope's third driving win since stable star Muscle Mountain took out the ANZAC Cup at Alexandra Park in May.

Now the Hopes have another Group victory in their sights.

“We will try and press on with him now to try and get him in the Dominion Handicap,” said Greg Hope.

The Group 1 $400,000 Renwick Farms Dominion Trot will be run on IRT New Zealand Trotting Cup day on Tuesday, November 12. In last week's rankings he was 24th overall but will improve significantly after yesterday's triumph.

His win made it a double on the card for the Hopes after Te Rapa produced a gallant fresh up effort to win the Richard Roberton Memorial Blue September Trot with Sam Thornley doing the steering.

Monbet still leaving his mark on Hopes

By Joshua Smith, Trackside.co.nz

Greg and Nina Hope captured the 2016 edition of the Group 1 Dominion Trot (3200m) with their star trotter Monbet, and this year they are hoping to repeat the feat with his three-quarter brother in blood, Mr Love.

Mr Love has put himself in contention for the two-mile feature, to be run at Addington Raceway on New Zealand Trotting Cup Day on November 12, following his victory in the Group 3 Banks Peninsula Cup (2810m) at Motukarara Raceway on Sunday.

Mr Love is now on a path towards the Dominion, and his very existence is in direct correlation to the Hopes’ previous winner of the time-honoured race, Monbet.

“We ended up buying the mother (The Earth Moved) purely because the mother (Diedre Darling) of Monbet died, and The Earth Moved was out of a full-sister to the mother of Monbet,” Hope said.

“We ended up getting three horses out of Monbet’s mother, but none of them were fillies. I wanted some fillies to breed on from the breed, so that is why we bought The Earth Moved.”

Hope purchased The Earth Moved off Neil Edge, who had trained her to one victory before she joined the Hopes’ Woodend Beach barn. She immediately rewarded her new owners, winning three of her first four starts for the barn, and went on to add a further two victories to her tally before heading to the broodmare paddock.

“She won for us on Show Day and I think we won $30,000 to $40,000 with her in the short time we had her. She had tie-up issues as well when she was a racehorse,” Hope said.

“I ended up selling her back four or five months ago to the Edges, who originally leased and raced her. We have got about four daughters out of her – Crazy N Love, Torvi, Freya (and a Carlton yearling filly).”

It was a great weekend for the progeny of The Earth Moved, with Freya kicking it off with a bang when third in the Gr.2 Sires’ Stakes 3YO Fillies Classique (1980m) at Addington Raceway on Friday.

Mr Love’s full-sister Crazy N Love also placed on the weekend, running third over 2170m at Motukarara Raceway on Sunday, while Torvi ran 10th in her contest.

The Love You mares are set to head to the broodmare paddock in the coming months, and Hope is optimistic they can pass on the family ability to their progeny.

“We are probably going to send Crazy N Love and Torvi to stud this year. Hopefully they can be valuable broodmares for us,” he said.

Both mares are set for a date with the Hopes’ Dream Vacation stallion Carlton, a close relation to their former multiple Group One winner Enghien, who stands at Wai Eyre Farm for a fee of $500 + GST.

“He (Carlton) is out of a full-sister to Enghien and Enghien won all of the Derbys, Sires’ Stakes, Jewels and Sales Series races,” Hope said. “He was Two and Three-Year-Old (Trotting Colt or Gelding) of the Year. When we bought him (Carlton) and got him home, we couldn’t believe that we could get one every much as good or better than him (Enghien).

“He (Carlton) is just a super wee horse, and he had high speed. He won his first race and then he broke a navicular bone in his foot. We are not too sure how it happened but that curtailed him from racing.

“I knew he had real potential, and I thought we would give him a go at stud because I knew that he would have been a really top horse.”

The now eight-year-old entire has made a solid start to his career at stud, already the sire of a Group Two performer from his first crop.

“In the first couple of years, we just stood him for free,” Hope said.

“The first year he had six foals and we got two of them. The first one (Carla Pixie) had three seconds and ran second in the Trotting Stakes (Gr.3, 1980m), and we sold her to Brent Lilley for $60,000. She has gone to Australia and has won over there.

“We have got Luca (half-brother to Mr Love) that is going to race this weekend. Michael Heenan has got one that has been to the workouts and won, John Versteeg has got two, and the other one Megan McIntyre has got, and she likes that one.

“The first six all look very promising and look like they are going to do the job.

“We couldn’t be any happier with his progeny. By all reports, everyone loves them and everyone that has bred one seems to want to go back to him with another mare. Signs are looking really good for him.

“The yearlings that are on the ground are his best crop. They are really nice mares, so it will be interesting to see. We are going with our three mares this season. They are going to go to him purely for the fact that we believe he is going to leave them.”

Crazy N Love already has a yearling colt by Carlton who Hope rates as one of the best young trotters to have been through his stable.

“He is a standout, he is just a beautiful horse,” Hope said. “He is a beautiful mover and a great going horse. I am really looking forward to him next year, he is probably as nice a young horse as we have broken in.”

The Hopes also have a Carlton yearling filly out of The Earth Moved.

“She goes along really lovely,” Hope said. “She is a big, strong filly and trots lovely.”

Hope is rapt the family is producing plenty of winners, and he is particularly excited to have another Dominion Trot contender in Mr Love to go alongside stable stalwarts Muscle Mountain and Midnight Dash in this year’s edition.

“We have had a little bit of luck in the Dominion, Monbet and Quite A Moment quinellaed it one year, and Muscle Mountain has come second to a champion in Sundees Son.

“Muscle Mountain is going back to the trials at Rangiora on Wednesday, Midnight Dash is coming up really well and will race in the Canterbury Park Trotting Cup on the 11th of October. I couldn’t be any happier with those two, they are working lovely.”

Hope is pleased to see the Dominion transferred to New Zealand Trotting Cup Day from its traditional Show Day time slot, believing it gives the industry a chance to showcase their best equine athletes from both gaits on their biggest stage.

“I felt it should always have been held on Cup Day,” he said. “It is great to have the two two-mile races on the same day.

“On Cup Day you want to have the best horses on show and a lot of the time those top trotters didn’t line-up because they were saving for the Dominion on Show Day. It is great that they have changed it, and they are going to have the best trotters in Australasia line-up on Cup Day, which is how it should be.”