Win spurs Ritchie's big dream | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

It was a big call on Melbourne but you somehow got the feeling Cambridge trainer Shaune Ritchie was always going to make it soon after Keep The Peace crossed the line for glory in the Mudgway Stakes.

His father, Frank Ritchie, trained the legendary Bonecrusher to victory in all the premier races throughout Australia in the 1980s.

"You know this is the best horse I've trained and I'm hoping she can go close to giving me the highs that dad got to," an affable Ritchie told SportToday in Hastings on Saturday.

Shaune Ritchie, who was Bonecrusher's strapper, now wants to take 4-year-old mare Keep The Peace to Melbourne so she can step up to better quality races to snare bigger purses but he needs the consensus of Gold Coast co-owners Paul Bellingham, and Mick and Luke Dittman.

She has registered five wins from 10 starts, earning $425,950 to date after Saturday.

Ritchie wanted to phone his father in Cambridge shortly after jockey James McDonald's acquisition by a bloody nose at the Hawke's Bay Racecourse but how Keep The Peace was feeling was his immediate concern.

Peter Mitchell bought Bonecrusher for $3250 at the Waikato Yearling Sales from breeder Bill Punch. The champion New Zealand thoroughbred is now 28 years old and has retired on Mitchell's Takanini property.

Frank Ritchie trained the chestnut gelding, nicknamed Big Red, to 44 races for 18 wins, five runners-up finishes and 12 thirds.

He earned Mitchell $674,225 and A$1,679,495 and was the first New Zealand horse to win more than $1 million in prize money.

Bonecrusher won three group 1 races in New Zealand, including the New Zealand Derby, and six group 1 races in Australia, including the AJC Derby, the Tancred Stakes, the Cox Plate, and the Australian Cup.

Coming off a three-month lay-off, Keep The Peace is on track to race in three weeks but whether she will stay for the remaining spring carnival races here - the $200,000 Windsor Park Plate on September 18 and the 2040m Kit Ormond Memorial Spring Classic on October 2 - is open to debate and speculation although the Windsor Park Plate looks likely.

Races such as the group one Turnbull Stakes over 2000m at Flemington, also on October 2, appear to be one of many major hurdles.

With about 30 horses in his stable, Ritchie said he treated them all with care but it was quite normal to have jangled nerves for the elite horses.

"You get a horse who's very good and very special and worth a lot of money so obviously other factors become involved.

"Before any of those big ones you always get a little nervous for the horse's performance or its wellbeing," he said, highlighting Keep The Peace banging her head on the gate in anticipating the opening of the barrier at the starting gate on Saturday as a case in point.

"There was a little bit of blood trickling down her nose [so] those sort of things always worry a trainer.

"You don't want to see a horse get hurt in any way, especially a horse as good as her."

Comfortable with the filly's fitness, Ritchie thought a little more distance might have been better for her but brought the horse to the Hawke's Bay Spring Carnival opener because the slow conditions suited the fifth-placed favourite over 1400m in the weight-for-age race.

"You can never be overconfident because they are too bloody hard to win and she nearly got beat today by the second-placed horse [Wall Street].

"With perhaps another two more strides he would have probably beaten us," Ritchie said, adding Wall Street was probably the best horse in the field over that distance normally.

"A little bit of wet track probably helped us but that's what these big races are all about - angles."

Jockey McDonald's trip to England and Ireland to tweak his riding style, he said, was paying dividends.

"He would have won the premiership had he stayed in New Zealand last year."

Ritchie didn't offer any tips to McDonald before the big race.

"You don't tell top jockeys what to do," he said with a laugh.