Troubled horse set for big US win

IAIN HYNDMAN | 22nd August 2007

A REAL life fairytale is unfolding on the other side of the globe for Wanganui horseman Hamish Auret.

Auret's racehorse, Crossing The Line, which he still part-owns with Palmerston North breeder Mary Wilson, is poised to win the Group One $US2 million Breeders' Cup Mile in the United States in October.

By Shuttle stallion Cape Cross (based at Darley Stud in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales), Crossing the Line is out of the former Wanganui mare Winds Of War and has bullocked his way into Breeders' Cup Mile contention on the strength of three unbeaten races since arriving in the United States in February this year.

His latest victory was in the $US400,000 Del Mar Mile, run in the early hours of Monday morning (NZ time).

While the journey has taken on fairytale proportions, it almost began as a nightmare for Auret and bears striking similarities to a movie currently airing on Sky Movies Dreamer.

It tells the tale of a filly who cheated death after fracturing a leg to come back to win a Breeders' Cup.

Following his first trial win, Crossing The Line appeared sold to Singaporean interests but failed the veterinary test with a bone chip in his fetlock.

"We had that removed and then three days later he developed colic (twisted bowel) and we rushed him down to Massey University for surgery," Auret recalled yesterday.

"He recovered from that and won his second trial and then was beaten into second in his raceday debut at Taranaki.

"He came out after that and won both his next two starts in New Zealand (Wairarapa and Otaki), but bled during his Otaki win," Auret said.

Under the New Zealand racing rules, first-time bleeders have a mandatory three-month stand-down from racing and after the second face a lifetime ban.

Bleeders, however, are allowed to race in North America, where a drug banned in Australasia is approved.

Auret was reluctant to risk a second bleeding attack, so he and Wilson decided to sell a half-share in the horse to North American interests. He was transferred to John Sadler's stables at Santa Anita, in California.

Massey equine veterinary surgeon Frederik Pauwels said he was delighted to see Crossing the Line do so well after he treated him for colic last June.

"We found that his large bowel was displaced and some small bowel was twisted around its base but fortunately because the horse was referred so quickly the bowel was not dead.

"It was possible to just untwist it and leave it in place," Mr Pauwels said.

Had Crossing the Line not been operated upon, most likely he would have suffered a painful death, Mr Pauwels said.

Auret said the journey was both emotional and testing and agreed it had striking similarities to the Dreamer movie.

"Funnily enough, I watched Dreamer just last week. That was a fairytale, and this feels just like one too. It's just the biggest buzz to part-own a horse with the talent to run in a Breeders' Cup," Auret said.

But before that happens at Monmouth Park in New Jersey on October 27, Auret and his partners will need to fork out a cool $US300,000 to become eligible.

"We need to pay the money to enter the bonus scheme that qualifies him for the Breeders' Cup and other races for the rest of his life in the United States."

Auret plans to be on course at Monmouth Park to cheer his horse on.