Bruggemann making most of NT trip with Darwin Cup fancy Highly Decorated
Well-travelled gelding shooting for seven on the bounce in $200,000 Top End feature
The Northern Territory might be an Australian racing outpost but its Top End carnival reaches its crescendo this weekend, culminating in the $200,000 Darwin Cup (2050m) on Monday.
For South Australian trainer Nicole Bruggemann, the Darwin Cup will be the forerunner for her making her NT sojourn a permanent one while also maintaining her base near Murray Bridge in her home state.
Bruggemann holds a strong hand in the lucrative cup, the last of a marathon 11 races on the card, where she will saddle up the in-form Highly Decorated (Epaulette) who will attempt to make it seven wins in succession on the unique Fannie Bay dirt and sump oil surface.
Naturally, the rising five-year-old has attracted a growing fan base as well, given his extended winning streak which stretched to six after an all-the-way victory in the Chief Minister’s Cup (1600m) at Darwin on July 10.
“He has been a very good little horse and he’s become quite popular since he’s been up here,” Bruggemann said yesterday.
“He has been doing everything right and I couldn’t ask for anything better. He’s only tiny, a bit of a cheeky little thing, but we’re having a ball with him.”
Already well ahead on their $20,000 investment made in the middle of last year when Highly Decorated, then a Scone Cup carnival maiden winner from eight starts, was purchased privately online, the gelding spent a brief five-start period with a rival South Australian trainer before joining Bruggemann’s team.
“His (original) owners put him through an Inglis sale, but they didn’t get the reserve they had on him, so he ended up on Bloodstock.com.au and my owner Donna Stephenson, who lives on Kangaroo Island – she has horses with a few other trainers in South Australia – bought him,” she said.
“I think she paid $20,000 for him and he ended up with Trevor Day for a while. He had a couple of runs there early and then Trevor gave him a spell and brought him back into work. He just couldn’t get him to fire, so they thought they’d like to try him on the dirt because when they took him to Broken Hill he ran third up there.
“Because we happened to be in Alice Springs at that time, Donna wanted me to take him up there and give him a try.”
There was a false start to Highly Decorated’s NT career due to a jockey shortage, but he soon made up for it, finishing third in Darwin on April 16, a week after his intended first start for Bruggemann.
On April 24, he would score by four and a half lengths in Class 2 company and he hasn’t looked back since.
“I do think the Epaulettes go well up here. There have been three or four up here who go all right,” she said, although it is unlikely that fact will be seen on a stallion brochure any time soon.
“Maybe it’s the breed or maybe it’s that he’s not an overly big horse and he can glide across the ground.
“I am not really sure what that reason is, but if I could replicate it, I’d be buying another ten like him.”
Bruggemann made a call to bypass one of the key cup lead-up races, last Saturday’s Metric Mile (1600m), after his Chief Minister’s Cup victory, despite the horse’s exceptional form.
“I keep thinking how many (runs) can he have? How many in a row can he win and his rating was high enough that I didn’t need to run him in the Metric Mile, so we gave him a quiet week after the Chief Minister’s Cup,” she explained.
“We took him to the beach, did some quiet work with him and then picked him up the past couple of weeks and he’s handled it really well.”
Regular jockey Jessie Philpot, who has ridden Highly Decorated to his past five wins, is on board again in Monday’s Cup.
“He will go to the front and stay there, hopefully. Can he stay there for the whole 2000 metres? It will probably depend on how many others take him on while he is rolling along out in front,” she said.
“There are a few more speed horses in this race, though. Whatever happens on the day, we are happy with what he’s done.”
The success of Highly Decorated, who started his career with Kurt Goldman at Goulburn, has prompted Bruggemann to set up a permanent base at Fannie Bay while maintaining her property at Monarto.
“We have been up three or four times now for the carnival with horses … but I’m actually at the TRNT (Thoroughbred Racing NT) office now about to do my Northern Territory trainer’s licence, so we will have a team up here all the time now,” she said.
“I have a nice property at Monarto, just out of Murray Bridge, and I don’t want to sell that, so we will probably have a team there as well.
“Not all the horses go on the dirt up here and we will be taking home five or six who haven’t handled it so well and they will race back in South Australia.”
The Darwin carnival often draws owners, trainers and jockeys, as well as punters, from around the country keen to escape the cold southern winters and Bruggemann says, for her, the local industry year-round is one that is undervalued by many participants.
“Even the average races up here, leading into the carnival, are worth $16,000 and $17,000 to the winner,” she said.
“That’s provincial money back in Adelaide and these horses might not be that class, so we will definitely bring a truckload up and try and win a few more in the off-season.”
And, to rub it in for the people who are in lockdown and unable to make what is often their annual trip to Darwin, Bruggemann said: “It has been a super carnival. There are heaps of people here, lots of travellers.
“The big trainers up here have got full stables and it’s a really fun spot to be at the moment. It is pretty much non-existent with Covid. You don’t see a mask anywhere.”