Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

As a keen horse racing fan and wannabe punter, Sideline Sid has picked up on an outstanding feat that seems to have flown below the radar of the New Zealand racing media.

One of the best steeplechasers bred in New Zealand, brought up a incredible milestone when he became the first Kiwi jumper to win over one million dollars in stakes money, when he won the Australian Grand National Steeplechase on Sunday.

Sea King grabbed the winners share of the $380,000 purse when he came with a finely timed run, to snatch the big prize on offer by a head.

The 12-year-old slipped under the radar of many racing fans in this country, as he has made his annual pilgrimages across the Tasman to plunder the pots of gold on offer.

Sea King has won some twenty races with all but three coming over the sticks.

Regular mentor Kevin Myers, who trains the jumps star from his Hawera base, has won the New Zealand jumping features of the Waikato, Hawkes Bay, KS Browne and Manawatu hurdles as well as the Waikato Steeples twice with the veteran jumper.

More recently when he has made his annual trips to the home of Australian jumps racing in Victoria, he has been trained by Paddy Payne who was born in New Zealand but made his name in Australia as a top hoop, before increasing weight in the saddle saw him turn to a training career.

Payne was quoted as saying, "in the five years that Sea King has been going to Australia he could claim little real credit for the horses wins as he arrived fit and ready to go".

It's over the bigger steeplechase fences that the Kiwi jumper has made his name in Australia, winning the prestigious Mosstrooper Steeple twice and the Grand National Steeple in his seven jumps wins over the ditch.

Sunday's victory, would have given the horses connections a huge thrill as it came at the geldings fourth attempt to win Australia's richest jumping race.

Stephen Pateman, who rode Sea King to victory in the Grand National, is another of the never-ending migration of kiwi jockeys over the Tasman.

Pateman has come from relatively obscurity in New Zealand racing to become the best jumps jockey in his adopted home.

Sea King's feats over both hurdles and steeples entitle him to be ranked alongside the great post WW2 jumping greats in Brooky Song, Brockton, Kumai and Hunterville.

Brookby Song, who annexed the countries big three steeples of the Great Northern, Wellington and Grand National steeplechasers in 1948, remains the only jumping star to be inducted into the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame.

The huge increase in stake money, mostly generated by inflation, is shown by the then record 17 thousand pound that Brooky Song banked some seventy years ago.

Sea King will surely rank alongside another Taranaki racing star in Rough Habit, in being more widely acclaimed for his success in Australia, than at home.