Veterans steal the show at Riccarton

Canterbury’s spring racing spotlight is often dominated by emerging young talent, but two old warhorses flipped that script at Riccarton on Saturday.
The two $50,000 open handicaps were won by a pair of veterans who boast a combined age of 19 years and between them have started 104 times.
Nine-year-old Times Ticking launched a withering finish down the outside to take out the 1400-metre Marshall Batteries Open Handicap, and just over an hour later, 10-year-old Green Luck carried his 61-kilogram topweight to a tenacious win in the 2000-metre Waimakariri Businesses North Canterbury Cup.
Times Ticking has now won 12 times in a 40-race career that spans seven seasons, earning more than $470,000 along the way. But Saturday’s success was something new for the well-travelled Tavistock gelding. It was his first win for Rangiora horseman Dean MacGregor, who has taken over the training this season from his father Alby.
Opaki-based Alby MacGregor remains a big part of this story, being both co-breeder and part-owner. Under his guidance, Times Ticking won the Gr. 3 Spring Sprint at Hastings, the Gr. 3 Canterbury Gold Cup and Listed Great Easter Handicap at Riccarton and this year’s Gr. 3 Trentham Stakes.
The decision not to renew his training licence this season brings the curtain down on a successful career, with New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing statistics crediting him with 111 wins since the late 1980s.
His 15 black-type victories are headed by the Gr. 1 Mudgway Partsworld Stakes (now Tarzino Trophy) in 2008 with Fritzy Boy, who won seven other stakes races including a Foxbridge Plate and a Manawatu Challenge Stakes.
MacGregor was also a dab hand with jumpers, his best the durable gelding Bodle whose 17 starts included the Trentham Hurdles in 2000 and the following year’s Wellington and Grand National Steeplechases.
“The fact that Dean’s doing the training now made the win on Saturday a little different,” the veteran horseman told RaceForm on Monday. “I’d trained the horse all the way through until this season, but now my son’s having a go.
“So it was a bit of a change, but still a big thrill. I have a major share in the ownership, and I’m also just really pleased to see the horse going so well for Dean.
“I don’t keep the best of health these days, and Dean has always loved this horse. The horse has previously had a few trips down south and stayed with Dean, and he’s always seemed to thrive there.
“So after a while, I said to Dean, ‘You keep him.’ I think it’s a good idea. It suits me, it suits Dean, and it seems to suit the horse too.
“The old bugger’s going so well, even though he’s nine. He’s still very keen to do the job, and Dean told me he was straight into his food after Saturday’s race.
“We’ll let the dust settle and then make a plan around what he does next. There’s another race in a fortnight, but Dean thinks that might come up a bit too soon. Another option might be the Thompson Handicap, which is over a mile at Trentham during Labour Weekend.”
Saturday’s win was the second training success for Dean MacGregor, who had previously recorded a win in a Rating 65 race at Riccarton in January 2022 with another of his father’s former horses, Awatane.
Although he grew up around horses at his father’s Opaki stable, Dean later drifted away into a business career in Canterbury.
“He’s been around horses all his life, because I’ve trained for a number of years, although his career has always been in the corporate world,” Alby MacGregor said.
“But he has three kids who all ride, and his wife does now and again as well. They’ve got a lovely property down there with plenty of space.
“I sent Awatane down to him a couple of years ago. He’d been a handy horse for me and won half a dozen, but he was showing a bit of age. Dean managed to get another win out of him before we retired him.
“Dean breeds a couple of horses as well, so he’s very keen. It’s just a matter of having the time to juggle everything.”
Times Ticking was ridden was ridden on Saturday by Canterbury apprentice Denby-Rose Tait, who described the win as the highlight of a career that last season gathered momentum with 22 wins from 218 rides. Two months into the new season, the 24-year-old is on the way to eclipsing those statistics with 10 wins from 55 raceday mounts.
Saturday’s North Canterbury Cup hero Green Luck has packed even more travel than the year younger Times Ticking into his 64-start, 11-win career.
The son of Street Cry started out in Australia, where Matthew Dunn trained him to two wins and a third from three starts in Queensland in 2018. He was subsequently sold into the Hong Kong stable of Caspar Fownes, for whom he recorded six wins and eight placings from 38 starts.
When his Hong Kong stint ended in 2021, Green Luck’s part-owner Willie Leung sent him to New Zealand and into the South Island stable of the late Paul Harris. He was a first-up winner on the Riccarton synthetic track in June 2022, then ventured north and performed with credit at the Hawke’s Bay Spring Carnival with a fifth in the Gr. 1 Tarzino Trophy and fourth in the Gr. 1 Livamol Classic.
Green Luck made his debut for Timaru trainer Stephanie Faulkner in early 2023, and earlier this year he claimed the first black-type win of his career with a determined front-running performance in the Gr. 3 Canterbury Gold Cup. The 10-year-old holds a nomination for the Gr. 1 Livamol Classic on October 12, for which the TAB rates him a $31 chance.
Green Luck is a half-brother to the former West Australian star Luckygray, who won 14 races including the Gr. 1 Kingston Town Classic and two editions of the Gr. 1 Railway Stakes. His 2011 Railway Stakes win came courtesy of the controversial relegation of the Roger James-trained He’s Remarkable.