Racing superstars promise music and words for top Kiwi trainers
But James, who trains the daughter of Savabeel with Robert Wellwood, says there has been no retirement talk, even as a plan B.
'She is going to remain a racehorse until she shows us she doesn't want to be,' he told the Herald.
'Her owners love racing her so that is the plan. Ideally we would like to bring her up and all going well head to Melbourne in the spring.
'Australia is the first aim because usually the tracks are better there than here in the spring but if she didn't come up exactly how we wanted, that could be revisited.
'But they want to race on and we are confident she will come back a better mare next season.'
James says the four-year-old season can be very taxing on mares just out of three-year-old ranks and in Orchestral's case, that was made even more difficult by her ongoing hormonal problems.
'They are obviously an issue and we just need to learn how to manage those better,' says James.
'But those aside, I think when you look back on her beaten runs this season, she often had an excuse.'
Like most of the elite New Zealand gallopers eyeing up a potential spring campaign in Australia, Orchestral could now have the option of at least one start in New Zealand, with the first Group 1 of next season, the Tarzino Trophy, almost certainly moving to Ellerslie in September.
That means less travel than if the Tarzino was held at its traditional home of Hastings, which is likely to be under renovation this spring, but also the better surface all but guaranteed by Ellerslie's StrathAyr track.
That could make the Tarzino a perfect launchpad for Australian raids later in the spring.
The forgotten horse of the James/Wellwood stable is already in Melbourne but will be travelling the other way across the Tasman, with Mark Twain set to return to New Zealand to rejoin the Cambridge stable.
Mark Twain gained automatic entry into last year's Melbourne Cup when winning the Roy Higgins at Flemington in March 2024 and was being set for the iconic race when he suffered a tendon strain last August.
He has remained in Victoria since to be rehabbed but will return home in a month for a long build-up, hopefully ending in a new racetrack campaign.
Mark Twain, also a NZ Derby and Auckland Cup placegetter, hasn't raced since winning that Roy Higgins, and if James and Wellwood are able to get him back to his best, his most realistic targets would be in Australia as the rising six-year-old would be weighted out of our biggest staying races.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald's Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world's biggest horse racing carnivals.
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The Spinoff
12 hours ago
- The Spinoff
‘Staggered it made that list': a conversation with Booker Prize shortlisted Charlotte Wood
Australian writer Charlotte Wood, the author of Booker Prize shortlisted novel Stone Yard Devotional, is one of the guests at WORD Christchurch this August. Books editor Claire Mabey caught up with her to talk the inspiration behind the book, and why she's so astonished by its success. Charlotte Wood is in her Sydney studio. The walls behind her are white and blank – the bookshelves too are empty. Wood is in the centre of the screen wearing thick-rimmed glasses, red lipstick and short, grey hair swept to one side. Her environment is suitably stripped bare – her latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional, is spacious, with no superfluous detail, only what is needed. Throughout our conversation Wood will look over her shoulder at the books that aren't there – laughing at how odd it is to be in an echoey place without those memory prompts while the room she's worked in for 23 years awaits a fresh coat of white paint. Wood looks exactly as she's appeared on my screen these last months. One Wednesday lunchtime a month for five months, I, along with many others, joined a Zoom masterclass with Wood and New Zealand writer Emily Perkins to listen to them discuss elements of fiction. Together they discussed the topics of voice, texture, time, people and tension. The two writers share an ability to delve into those tools that on the surface appear explicable, even simple, but soon become malleable ideas that shift depending on how they are applied and by who. I was drawn to the course for two main reasons: the bond between Wood and Perkins satisfies a niggle I've long held about the distance between Aotearoa and Australia's literary cultures. Wood agrees: she finds it absurd that we don't have a close creative relationship with each other in the literary world. Very few New Zealand writers become household names over the ditch and vice versa. Seeing Wood and Perkins in deep conversation together, sharing ideas and experiences, was a welcome bridge between us. The other draw was the calibre of the writers themselves. Perkins is one of those household names here in Aotearoa – known most recently for her Ockham-Award winning novel, Lioness. Wood is the author of 11 books including the explosively feminist The Natural Way of Things (2015) and her highly praised book The Luminous Solution, a collection of her writing over 20 years about the creative process. But it was Stone Yard Devotional that propelled Wood's visibility when it was shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 2024, an honour that mystified Wood. Stone Yard Devotional is an intensely introspective novel. It's told in a diary format and is about a middle-aged woman who has suffered great loss (loss of parents, friends; loss of a marriage, loss in her work in conservation) and who returns to the place where she grew up to stay in a monastery. Tension and expansion is created through the narrator's fluid swings between reflections on the present and reflections on the deeper past; and as changes in the environment (including a biblical mouse plague – a real-life, climate-change induced catastrophe that Wood transposed onto her setting) and personnel of the monastery unsettles the steady nature of the community. For Wood, the novel came from a very specific moment. She wrote it as she and her two sisters were diagnosed with breast cancer – what she describes as 'a personal existential calamity' – and were receiving treatment at the same time; and during the Covid lockdowns which followed the 2019 bush fires – the worst Australia had seen. 'I'm really staggered that it got on [the Booker Prize] list because of the kind of book it is,' Wood explains. Stone Yard Devotional is what is called a 'quiet novel' – meaning that it doesn't lean on plot so much as it follows the twists and turns of the inquiring, idiosyncratic mind wrestling with grief, despair, and an intense draw to solipsism, reflection and steady daily ritual (cooking, cleaning, gardening as much as the steady marking of time that the nuns' devotionals offer). The writing is strikingly bare while also alive – even ornate – with the detail of the narrator's cinematic memories and attention to the peculiar qualities of them. 'My instinct was to put nothing trivial in the book, nothing inessential,' says Wood. 'I didn't want to explain anything that I didn't have to explain. I wanted to give the reader credit for being smarter than me and allow them space to have their own life come up to their consciousness as they were reading. I wanted to give a lot of space.' The experience of reading Stone Yard Devotional is to retreat – to attempt, with the narrator, some kind of quest for peace in a world that is overwhelmed with rolling catastrophes and political denial. The fantastic tension in the novel is anchored to the question of whether retreat is avoidance, or whether such a quiet, private existence is doing more work than most. Wood draws out this tension through the character of Helen Parry – an activist nun – a charismatic, intrusive character but a markedly unlikeable one. 'Helen Perry embodies this problem of being in the world versus being out of the world,' says Wood. She wanted to reflect what she calls 'a kind of wild rogue nun' that she's noticed over the years. 'They do cool things – political work and activist work – and they seem to be sole operators.' Wood's conversation and obvious talent for craft, introspection and process is all the more striking in this moment of the juggernaut of AI. Ironically another 'unprecedented' moment among so many long-predicted by scientists and science fiction writers (floods, fires, plagues and pandemics being other such 'unprecedented' yet increasingly common phenomena). Wood, like so many creatives, is grappling with the implications of AI and cites a Guardian article that quotes filmmaker Justine Bateman: 'They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years … We will get to the point … that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer.' Wood will never use generative AI but doesn't believe in throwing up hands against new technologies either. She's played with Claude AI but found it feeble – often incorrect, unoriginal. She has concluded that she's not worried about AI writing novels: 'I don't give a shit about that. Who is going to read it?' Wood is more concerned about the loss of process: 'I think it's obscene to pretend that all we want is result, and it'll be a shit result. When we read a book, we want a human connection with another person, and we want that book to be an outcome of all of that writer's life and thinking and experience and observation and serendipity, and the weather – all of this stuff goes into making something deeply, deeply human.' It's this deeply human experience that makes Stone Yard Devotional so relatable: on the surface it is hard to imagine a book about a woman who goes off to live in a monastery connecting with so many readers to such a heightened degree as it has. But Wood's attention to instinct, to the strange ways of the mind and what she calls 'distorted memory' (after an Elizabeth Hardwick quote that is the epigraph of the novel) is so specific that it becomes universal. It's New Zealand painter Jude Rae who Wood credits with finding the form of her novel. Rae is known for her still life paintings which fascinate Wood because of what she describes as an 'energy in the paint' – a liveliness to the otherwise static arrangement of the work. Rae told Wood that she achieves the effect by breaking up the surface – literally creating gaps where layers of paint show through. 'I tucked that away,' said Wood, 'and that's where the diary form came to me.' Stone Yard Devotional is told in three parts and within each of those parts are fragments – some larger chunks, pages; others short, sometimes just one sentence. Wood said that this novel taught her to trust her unconscious mind – to place information where she felt it needed to go rather than thinking about traditional, rational ideas of where information should fit. A moving life. Wood is joining Perkins live at WORD Christchurch next month where they will be running a live version of their online masterclasses. She's looking forward to being in Aotearoa – particularly in relation to the oddity that is the gulf between Australian and New Zealand literary communities. My parting question is to ask Wood for recommendations – Australian writers she admires. We discuss Fiona McFarlane, Joan London, Helen Garner, Gail Jones, Alexis Wright and Ellen van Neervan. Wood then turns to glance at her empty bookshelves to consult for more and momentarily despairs at their absence, 'so weird when they're not there! I feel out of my head.' Charlotte Wood will appear in multiple events at WORD Christchurch this August including an event on Stone Yard Devotional, an Elements of Fiction masterclass, live with Emily Perkins.
NZ Herald
12 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Gisborne kayaking, surf lifesaving great Liz Thompson stepping back
'We had an adults' group under way. We lost some of the equipment they were using in Cyclone Gabrielle but they are growing again ... I'll enjoy paddling with them.' Thompson is president of Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club – the first woman to hold that position – and is the first and so far only woman to be made a life member of the club. In his book, A Shade of Blue – A Touch of Gold, on the history of Waikanae SLSC from 1950 to 2000, Dick Glover reflected on candidates for the unofficial title of Waikanae 'Lifesaver of the Century'. In his opinion, five members stood out. 'There is really only one candidate for the women's title and that must be Liz Thompson, nee Blencowe,' Glover wrote. 'Liz's phenomenal record was that, since the inception of women's ski racing at national level, she was placed either first or second in a ski event in every one of the 15 seasons between 1983 and 1998. 'When her results in surf swims and leading role in R & R [rescue and resuscitation] are taken into consideration, she won 14 New Zealand titles and was placed second or third in 24 other events. 'Add to that her encouragement and coaching of young women competitors on top of personal training, a career as a policewoman promoted to sergeant and the onset of motherhood in the mid-90s. The mind boggles at how Liz could juggle so many facets in her life and remain a top competitor.' The other four in Glover's shortlist were Bruce Adams, Grant Bramwell, Alan Thompson and Barry McLean, with McLean getting the author's nod as Waikanae 'Lifeguard of the Century'. Liz Blencowe married Alan Thompson in 1991. Outspoken and driven, Olympic double gold-medallist Thompson could be a handful for officialdom, but Blencowe was a world-class athlete in her own right and they met on equal terms. Working together and separately as required, they built on solid foundations to establish Poverty Bay Kayak Club as a force in New Zealand canoeing. They met before the 1980 Moscow Olympics, when New Zealand canoeists competed in the Australian national championships. Alan Thompson was one of three Kiwi canoeists who competed in the Moscow Games (team coach was Gisborne's John Grant ... he and Thompson adapted running coach Arthur Lydiard's training methods to canoeing). Blencowe had been nominated for the Australian team by her sport – Australia competed in the boycott-affected Games under the Olympic flag – but she did not make the Olympic committee's selection. Their paths crossed again in 1982 at international regattas in the lead-up to the world championships. While European athletes went home between regattas, the New Zealanders, Australians and North Americans hung around the venues, because home was too far away. 'We got to know quite a few of them,' she said. 'I came to Gisborne at the end of '82. I had got to know Alan and the rest of the group. Not a lot was happening in the way of squad for me to train with in Melbourne [her base at the time]. I wanted a fresh outlook. I could have gone to Hungary, but I didn't speak the language, and getting into Hungary was a bit iffy at the time.' It came down to Canada or New Zealand, and Alan was a 'big factor' in her choice to come to Gisborne. Liz Thompson has her game face on, racing for Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club in a surf ski event during her competitive heyday. She returned to Australia for the selection trials for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and was the only woman picked to paddle for Australia at the Games. Women competing in individual events then had only a 500m race in Olympic kayak sprint racing and Liz finished eighth in the final. Back in Gisborne, Alan was keen to have Liz as part of a women's programme. 'He brought in Blair Campbell as coach and recruited three ski paddlers from Ōtaki,' Liz said. 'I had to teach them how to paddle a kayak. 'The boys had done really well. Brian Wilson and Benny Hutchings were the coaches, and Grant [Bramwell], Alan [Thompson] and Robbie Jenkinson were among the paddlers training together. 'Kayak club members used to train from Bill De Costa's section at the end of Fitzherbert St. The woman next door used to let us use her hose to wash the mud off. 'Then the Kiwanis club got behind us and built a clubhouse at Anzac Park. It was opened in 1985. When the girls from Ōtaki arrived, we had changing rooms and hot showers ... amazing facilities.' Kayaking and surf lifesaving co-existed in Liz and Alan's sporting world from 1983 to 2000, with coaching taking a steadily increasing share of their time. From featuring in the lifesaving medal tallies primarily as an individual competitor, Liz Thompson partnered up-and-coming athletes in the double ski, winning nationals gold with Jackie Callahan twice and Leigh Webster three times, and silver with Kristen Glover twice. The first double ski win with Webster, in 1995, came early in Thompson's pregnancy with daughter Kim, and the third, in 1998, came when son Quaid was 5 weeks old. At the latter carnival, Thompson was also a member of silver-medal-winning teams in the women's taplin relay and women's six-place. She gained particular satisfaction from coaching Rachel Beale in the lead-up to her victory in the women's under-19 surf ski in the national champs at Ōakura in 2000, and being handler for Webster when she won the women's ironperson race in the nationals at Gisborne's Midway Beach in 2001. And apart from a few years off when her children were small, she's done her bit on beach patrols. Thompson was born in Mackay, North Queensland, on January 10, 1961. The family lived further south, in a town called Sarina, which didn't have a hospital. A brother, David, is three years older. Their father Lou worked for Kraft Foods and was in Queensland 'for something to do with Vegemite'. Mother Pat was a swimming coach and physical education teacher. When Thompson was 2, the family headed back to Melbourne, her parents' hometown. Pat Blencowe used fun and familiarity in her swimming lessons. She let children get familiar with the water by playing in it and when she introduced them to swimming, it was breaststroke first. In her own swim coaching for Waikanae SLSC, Thompson adopted her mother's approach and didn't teach freestyle until her charges had mastered the 'lifesaving breaststroke'. When Quaid was 7, and about to compete in a breaststroke race, Thompson explained the stroke in terms she had used teaching it to him: 'Open-the-curtains arms and squash-mosquito legs'. Quaid duly won the race. As a youngster, Thompson had followed her brother into whitewater kayaking and soon added slalom and sprint versions of the sport. In 1981, she competed in the world championships of all three disciplines but eventually concentrated on sprint races. She had coached in one discipline or another from the late 1980s, but after a break when the children were young, she got back into kayak coaching after daughter Kim and a few friends became interested and helped development coach Agi Szabo. When Szabo left, Thompson stepped up. 'You have to help them to enjoy what they're doing, or they won't keep coming back,' she said. 'From the outset, you want to teach the basics of good technique. 'A big thing is having a peer group. If you get a good group coming through a holiday programme and some stay on and join the club, it's a lot easier if they have mates down there. It's more fun. 'If I'm running a programme for youngsters getting into paddling, I want to see the kids who haven't found their 'thing' yet. A lot of 12-year-olds just love getting out on the river, love the fact that they're quite good at it. You can teach them the rest. 'Every kid who has done a season or two has got something out of it, learnt about themselves, about co-operating as a team, about self-discipline. Even if they don't continue, they have learnt something. It is not wasted effort. You have done something for that kid.' Thompson was inducted into the Surf Life Saving New Zealand Sport Hall of Fame in 2016, along with – among others – Cory Hutchings and sometime Waikanae competitor Anna Ballara. Alan Thompson had been inducted in 1995. In February this year, Liz Thompson was announced as one of four 2024 recipients of the Canoe Racing New Zealand Outstanding Service Award recognising outstanding contribution at club, regional or national level over at least 10 years of service to the sport.
Otago Daily Times
12 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Fun but needs (armour) polish
I was recently given the opportunity to have a quick look at an alpha-build of a new game called Renown, alongside a small play session with Australian developers RDBK Studios. Renown is an open world crafting and base-building game, which seem like a dime a dozen nowadays. It manages to separate itself though with its main draw of combat, which is aligned more with medieval arena fighters. It also shuns some other basic survival mechanics like food and thirst. This is a pretty neat concept and I was interested by that alone. As with other games of this type, there is no story — just a world in which you and other players can forge your own path, which has never personally interested me, but as we can see in the popularity of games like Rust, certainly has fans. Those who have played games like MORDHAU or the Chivalry series will be right at home with the combat. You can swing your weapon from left, right, overhead, and make stabs. There's parries, feints and morphs, and for the more technically knowledgeable out there, they also have accels and drags and your physical hitbox moves with your mouse, so you can duck under sword blows. For those who want a ranged option, there's plenty of bows and arrows to turn others into human pincushions. Hitboxes did seem a little off, especially against bots. Attacking someone from behind just seemed to fail all the time, and sometimes attacks seemed to phase into opponents or miss. It worked fine when I tried some old-fashioned fisticuffs against other players though, so maybe this is a skill issue on my end or something specific to bots. Crafting is fairly simple. You gather resources from the surroundings using tools or fists, then open the crafting menu and get to it. It's added to a queue so you can walk around doing other things while it all finishes in the background. You can also build workshops, like a forge to smelt those gold coins you find into gold ingots, used in the research tree to unlock more crafting recipes. The play session itself ran rather smoothly as we were shown around some player-built structures, from small huts to towering castles, which the devs say won't take an excessively long time to build. After that there was a small attack vs defence raid which the defence team — which I was on — handily lost. Then there was some building of simple huts and some small player scuffles before the session wrapped up. Altogether, I was rather impressed by what I saw. It wasn't perfect by a long shot but clearly something that passionate people had built. I'm not sure about the game's concept of a maintenance tax, essentially an expanding drain on resources to keep your buildings alive. Basically, this puts a theoretical cap on building size, as eventually you won't be able to support the drain. On the plus side, it keeps large clans from just building a massive base while not locking out smaller clans or solo players from building. In my personal testing, tossing a few stacks of wood in would keep my little shack going for several days. It's an early alpha build so there is clearly a lot to be done. The interactions you can make with the world felt obtuse for no reason. You use Q and R to scroll up and down a list, but R for some reason opens the crafting menu by default! Why not just use the scroll wheel? It was really janky and I never got used to it. You could also rotate items in the inventory using the same R button. It's mad! Of course, no early access game is without a bug or 10 and Renown is no exception. For some reason, items got stuck in my inventory and I was unable to move or drop them, so they just took up space forever. I somehow dislocated my arm in game and was unable to do anything until the kind player I was beating in a fight punched me out of it. My personal opinion is that Renown has a solid foundation but needs a lot of polish before release. So far, its neat concept and fun combat are covered with a layer of strange jank and an unpolished sheen. But clearly, the devs just want players to build big castles and smash armies together and have fun. I can deeply respect that. Renown is slated for early access release on PC in Q3 2025. By Michael Robertson
