“Like the All Blacks at Eden Park” – that’s the support (and the result) top Kiwi driver Blair Orange wants from the World Driving Championship.
Orange, a seven-time champion driver in the country, says the familiarity of driving horses he knows well at courses he races at all the time could be critical to his chances of a top performance in the WDC.
“It’s like the All Blacks at Eden Park. They are in their own backyard and have huge crowd support and the team rises to the occasion.”
Famously the All Blacks have build a fortress at New Zealand’s National Stadium, undefeated in 51 tests dating back to 1994. It’s a hostile environment for visiting teams – just ask the Springboks following their seven-point defeat there last weekend.
Since the first championships in 1970 there have been 13 instances of home country drivers winning the title – two of them Canadian star James MacDonald (2017) and Frenchman Pierre Vercruysse (2013) are in the line-up again this year.
Orange is a $4 favourite to win his home WDC ahead of Australia’s Gary Hall Junior ($5). MacDonald is at $5.50 with Vercruysse at $7. Then there is Brett Beckwith (USA, $7), Mats Djuse (Sweden, $10), Antonio Simioli (Italy, $12), Jaap Van Rijn (Netherlands, $12), Michael Nimczyk (Germany, $15), and Santtu Raitala (Finland, $18).
“They are all world class drivers – it’s not going to be easy,” says Orange.
When he went to the 2023 world championships in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium Orange finished eighth.
Two of the major problems were out of his control.
“It was the language barrier and the fact I didn’t know any of the horses”.
“You go into races a bit blind – you didn’t know the opposition or the horses you were driving either.”
Obviously, that will not be a problem this year.
Few drivers have more experience of local horses on local tracks than Orange has. He has had over 20,000 drives right around the country since starting out in the mid 1990s and with his lifetime total approaching 3000 winners he is fourth overall behind Tony Herlihy, Maurice McKendry and Ricky May. He is also the most successful driver ever at Kaikoura, with the WDC starting there on November 2.
Added to that some of his rivals would have had limited or possibly no experience of driving pacers and they will have to get used to the Kiwi style of driving.
“The rules mean it can be a bit more push and shove here – we are more aggressive than some other places so that’s something they will have to adapt to.”
Orange is vying to be the seventh New Zealand world champion, following on from Tony Herlihy, Maurice McKendry, Dexter Dunn, Mark Jones, Robert Cameron and Kevin Holmes and while he seemingly has a lot of factors in his favour he is taking nothing for granted.
“There’s still a lot of luck involved – what horses you get and how they are drawn,”
Win or lose though he says the WDC will be big
“There are a lot of people talking about it,” says Orange, “to race in places we are going to and showing them off to the world is something we should all be proud of as an industry.”
The first ever World Driving Championship to be held entirely in this country starts in exactly 50 days. The event brings together 10 of the best drivers from all over the globe competing in 20 heats on four tracks (Kaikoura, Cambridge, Winton and Addington).
The Championship will reach a crescendo on November 11 with the final heat, and the champion being crowned, on a star-studded IRT New Zealand Trotting Cup day at Addington Raceway.
