Stakes win pointer to stardom | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

The list of winners of the Mudgway PartsWorld Stakes in the past 10 years is arguably the strongest of any race on the New Zealand calendar.

Almost without exception, the winner of this race has proven to be the best sprinter-miler of the season.

The list is littered with the best horses of the decade - Sunline won it in 2002, Miss Potential in 2003, Starcraft in 2004, Xcellent in 2005 and Seachange in 2006 and 2007.

Tavistock was a $40 upset winner of the race last year in a season that later included another group 1 win and a win at group 2 level in Melbourne. It's illustrious company and, at 4.01pm tomorrow, another horse will have his or her name added to this amazing list.

For one runner, it wouldn't be the first time - Fritzy Boy won the race in 2008 on a rain-affected track. Many are predicting the track will be in similar condition this year and, if it is, he would be a much stronger chance than his current $16 odds indicate.

In the first three five times out of nine at Hastings and four times out of seven over 1400m, Fritzy Boy is certainly not without a chance of becoming only the second horse (after Seachange) to win the Mudgway twice.

But he is not the only group one winner in the race. In fact, no fewer than eight of these 18 runners have won at the highest level - six of them in the 2009-10 season alone.

Unsurprisingly, they are dominating the betting. Thorndon Mile winner Wall Street is the current favourite, ahead of 2008-09 Horse of the Year Mufhasa, who finished a close second in this race last year.

Oaks winner Keep The Peace is the current third favourite.

The $31 odds available for a Vosne Romanee win certainly don't do his huge ability justice. His three group one wins last season were all terrific performances against top-quality fields, and he established himself as a racehorse of the very highest class.

The doubts around him this weekend are probably centred on the expected track conditions, the fact that 1400m is short of his best and also the unfortunate 18 barrier draw.

An interesting runner is the Australian raider Illuminates. Owned by Harvey Norman co-founder and new owner of Westbury Stud Gerry Harvey, Illuminates is an underrated mare who has won 10 races and more than $1 million in her career.

The one thing missing from her resume is a group one win and that is obviously the purpose for which she has been brought across the Tasman. The wetter the tracks are the better Illuminates seems to be, so if the track fails to dry as much as some other horses' connections would like, the chances of a win for Illuminates would skyrocket as other runners' chances wane.

The Bay is still looking for its first local win in the Mudgway and its hopes of ending that drought this year lie with the Hastings trainer John Bary's The Hombre. The 4-year-old gave us a first glimpse of his considerable ability with a big win over Joey Massino and St Germaine in an earlier event on Mudgway day last year, and he then went on to prove he was by no means out of his depth in races at the highest level in Queensland.

He could be in for a hugely successful season, and he is rated a $12 chance of starting that campaign with what would be a hugely popular hometown win.

The 2010 Mudgway has drawn a field that is worthy of its list of recent winners. That there are no runners priced higher than $51 to win suggests an evenness in the field, but that is not to say that the runners are all equally mediocre.

While the field may lack a superstar of the class of Seachange and Xcellent, the season's first group one race has a field stacked with class, and it looks to be a race that will live long in the memory of racegoers tomorrow.