‘Mack truck’ filly hits Auckland for the first time

Garrick Knight - Raceform  •  March 14th, 2025 2:00 PM   •  3 min read
‘Mack truck’ filly hits Auckland for the first time
Beside Me has had a whirlwind start to 2025 with three dynamic wins. Photo Credit: RaceForm
Cran Dalgety admits it’s quite scary to think just what Beside Me could become.
And Friday night’s Gr. 2 $70,000 Caduceus Club Ladyship Stakes at Alexandra Park will give him, training partner and wife Chrissie, and driver, their son Carter, an inkling as to just what that might me.
The blueblood filly has taken the game by storm in 2025, wowing everyone with three breathtaking wins in South Island lower grades.
This week she steps up to stakes level, going right-handed for the first time, on a trip away from home that included her first flight.
Add in that she’s drawn the second line and is taking on a number of classy fillies, and there are mounting ‘risk’ factors for punters. But it’s really only the clockwise direction that has Dalgety not declaring her.
“It’s all very well having talent, but you have to hit the first bend right-handed at speed, and the last bend, so that’s going to be a test for her educationally,” Dalgety told RaceForm.
“If she’d been that way before I’d be saying she’s a $1.50 shot, but she hasn’t. That being said, it’s a $70,000 race so we will be driving her confidently.”
Dalgety has a way with words, but he really steps it up a notch when comparing Beside Me with other good fillies he’s trained.
“Talent-wise she is sort of different to the rest – she’s a big bloody Mack track,” he told RaceForm. “She’s got those blue veins running through her and I’m confident that those first few wins weren’t just flukes.
“It’s going to take a fair amount of starts to get there, but I really think in time she could quite a gorilla.”
That’s Dalgety-speak for champion and yes, that’s still miles away, but aside from the human advantage she carries being from that stable, she’s from the best female family in the book, bar none.
Mum, Dream About Me won more than $1.4 million, set New Zealand records and recorded multiple Group One wins on both sides of the Ditch.
She might have had a case for being our greatest ever racemare, had it not been for her ‘aunty’, Adore Me ($1.6 million).
Captains Mistress, Forever Me, Sweet On Me, Christen Me, Merlin and Have Faith In Me are just some of the other Group One winners in the family, as is the Dalgetys’ All You Need Is Me, who won this race last year.
So there is an absurd level of privilege hanging over Beside Me and thankfully for her connections, she’s taken the ball and run with it this campaign.
Joining Beside Me and unraced juvenile Fugitive on the flight north earlier this week was the Dalgety stable star Republican Party. He was last seen at Alexandra Park on New Years’ Eve when winning the Auckland Cup, and since then has been to Melbourne, where he ran third in the Hunter Cup on February 1.
He tackles the $40,000 Gr. 3 Lincoln Farms Founders Cup, the first leg of a big northern campaign through autumn that is focussed on the $1 Million Race by betcha at Cambridge on April 4, for which his owners have purchased a slot.
“He’s had the one trial at Rangiora last week, which was a nice blowout for him,” Dalgety said. “You can’t get them super tight without a race and obviously he did need that.
“With the pref draw over 1700 metres, we’re giving the whole field a head start.
“I’d like to think we’ll be very competitive, but I do think there will a couple of excuses up our sleeve if he gets beaten.”
Republican Party will be at Alexandra Park next week for the City of Auckland Free-For-All, but Dalgety is undecided about whether they head to the Waikato Flying Mile in the week prior to The Race.
The stable has four runners at Addington on Friday night, Dalgety describing them as “runners rather than stars”.
“Justyouwait is a nice filly and is probably our best chance there, in the fillies and mares’ maiden.”

Photograph at the top of the page: Beside Me has had a whirlwind start to 2025 with three dynamic wins. Photo Credit: RaceForm

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