Top mare’s racing days numbered

Pondarosa Miss is likely to have two more Group One starts before she is retired.

A minor injury has ruled her out of this Saturday’s Barfoot & Thompson Auckland Cup and her farewell appearances will now take in two feature miles.

“She just hit a leg at the wrong time and missed a bit of work so she’s out of the cup,” said co-owner Darrell Hollinshead, who bred the five-year-old with his father Peter, the trainer of the High Chaparral mare.

“We’ll freshen her up now and we’ll look toward the Breeders’ Stakes at Te Aroha and the Easter Handicap and then she’ll probably go to the broodmare paddock.”

It is a racing path followed last year by Pondarosa Miss following her placing behind Rock Diva and King Kamada in the Auckland Cup.

“We had a lot of issues with her and I don’t know how she finished third – she just about collapsed after the race,” Peter Hollinshead said.

“She’d had a virus and we thought she was over it and she had scoped clear, but the extra pressure of the cup brought it all on again.”

She returned to finish fifth in the Te Aroha feature before she beat Vespa and Kawi in the Easter.

Most recently, Pondarosa Miss finished a brave fourth in the Gr.2 Avondale Cup after racing three wide without cover for much of the race and, by Trudy Thornton’s admission, not one of her best rides.

“We can all make those mistakes, it’s not easy riding in those good fields and sometimes that’s the way it pans out,” Hollinshead said.