Kelt Capital Stakes

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The Kelt Capital Stakes, run at Hastings Racecourse in Hawke's Bay, is New Zealand's richest thoroughbred horse race. It is run over 2040m and from 2007 will carry prizemoney of NZ$2,000,000.

The race is sponsored by Kelt Capital Limited, and in particular the owner thereof Sam Kelt, a strong supporter of New Zealand and particularly Hawke's Bay racing. Just a decade ago the race was a Group 3 event worth under $100,000, but the growth through Kelt's sponsorship has been astronomical.

When The Message won the race in 2000 it was worth $250,000. In 2002 it was run as the richest-equal race in New Zealand for a prize of $500,000, and in 2004 it was New Zealand's first million-dollar race for more than a decade when Balmuse won the race.

The Kelt is run on the first Saturday in October, along with two other Group features, the Hawke's Bay Guineas for three year olds and the recently bolstered GR Kelt Memorial for fillies and mares, making it one of the most important days of racing on the New Zealand calendar. Hawke's Bay's traditionally reliable and warm spring weather makes perfect track conditions almost inevitable.

The race, and its two predecessors in Hawke's Bay's Spring Carnival, the 1400m Mudgway Stakes and the 1600m Stoney Bridge Stakes, both Group 1, have become the main target for not just the spring but the entire season for New Zealand's best weight-for-age gallopers, and the Kelt has become the focus of attention from overseas too. In 2004, the globe-trotting Australian-owned Starcraft arrived at Hastings for all three races, winning the Mudgway and Stoney Bridge brilliantly before tasting a shock defeat in the Kelt at the hands of the Kiwi, Balmuse. However, he went on to capture two Group 1 events in Europe before retiring to stud in Australia.

The race is not time-honoured like many of New Zealand's other feature races, but the sponsorship of Kelt has put it right at the very top of racing in this country and it is undoubtedly the most important weight-for-age race on the calendar.