Last year’s winner Art Cadeau will defend his title in this year’s The Kosciuszko after being selected by Hurlstone Park TAB customer to contest the $2 million race.
The Kosciuszko, which was launched in 2018 by Racing New South Wales, has had four different winners to date … Belfyler in 2018, Handle The Truth in 2019, Its Me in 2020 and Art Cadeau in 2021.
The four previous winners were ridden by different jockeys for different trainers … so trainer Terry Robinson and Art Cadeau now find themselves staring at creating a piece of history if the six-year-old gelding can salute again and so become the first back-to-back winner of The Kosciuszko.
A relatively lightly raced six-year-old, Art Cadeau has raced eight time since winning the 2021 The Kosciuszko, picking up one win (at Randwick at odds of $14), and two places, during that time to improve his overall record to seven wins and eight places from twenty starts with $1.4 million banked in prize-money.
The Kosciuszko field is restricted in numbers to fourteen starters, with the makeup of the final line-up being nominated by the lucky ticket holders of numbers drawn in The Kosciusko sweepstake, following a wildly publicised promotion for the race.
Those ticket numbers were announced today obviously sparking some celebration and excitement amongst those ticket holders who are now in line to share in The Koscousko race prize-money.
The Kosciuszko, the world’s richest race for country-trained horses (restricted to NSW country and ACT trained horses only), is a 1200 metre sprint contest run under set weights and penalties conditions which will be run on the same day as The TAB Everest at Royal Randwick on Saturday 15 October 2022.