Newman Strikes Again With A Home-Bred

 

Bulls horseman Bryce Newman continued his excellent strike rate this afternoon with WS-breds when Magic Tricks won on debut at Hawera. The only other graduate of the Matamata farm he has trained is Ashburn Lane, who has won four times for the stable.

Both horses are by the Snippets stallion Pins and are raced by Palmerston North owner Wayne Kitching, who races under the Ashburn Investments banner. “I actually went to the sales to buy a colt for him and couldn’t get what I wanted,” Newman said. “Some time after that I ran Mark (Chittick) and he said he had this filly so a deal was done.”

Passed in at Karaka in 2010, Magic Tricks is out of the winning Centaine mare Abracadabra, a half-sister to the Gr 2 Championship Stakes winner Ellakapella. “She’s a nice filly and we were pretty confident she’d go well, although you never know with first-starters,” Newman, a New Zealand representative equestrian rider, said. “She had a quiet trial the other day and the horse of Karen Zimmerman’s that won it (Jamaal) came out and won at Otaki.”

The original intention to have Magic Tricks up and running in the spring was foiled by shin soreness, but the wait has now proved worthwhile. “She won a trial so we knew she had some gas, but she just wasn’t ready,” Newman said. “We’ve got no fixed plan with her so we’ll just take her home and she how she does.”