Australian cricket hero David Warner part-owns 2024 Stradbroke Handicap runner Semana

Cricket hero David Warner is trying to win a T20 World Cup for Australia, but he is also striving to win racing’s Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap on Saturday.

By BEN DORRIES and BEN HORNE

David Warner is trying to hit the Stradbroke Handicap for six.

The Aussie cricket great is on the other side of the planet in the Caribbean and on Saturday will be in St Lucia preparing for Australia’s T20 World Cup game against Scotland.

But the batting blaster will also be keeping an eagle eye on Brisbane where he will have Semana racing as a $21 chance in the Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap at Eagle Farm.

“It’s awesome for the (ownership) team and the syndicate to have a Group 1 runner in the Stradbroke and hopefully she goes close,” Warner told Racenet, from the West Indies.

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David Warner is aiming for success on two very different sporting fields on different sides of the planet on Saturday. Picture: Gareth Copley/Getty Images.

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Warner is one of the owners of the four-year-old mare who is trained by Ciaron Maher, the master horseman who scored last Saturday’s Group 1 Queensland Oaks with a freakish training performance with $101 roughie Socks Nation.

Maher confessed to Racenet he didn’t initially know Warner was in the ownership of Semana.

But Maher is convinced the mare, who boasts a pair of Group 1 placings behind Zougotcha in fillies and mares races during the Sydney autumn carnival, can give the Stradbroke a shake.

Semana has flown under the radar in the lead-up to Saturday’s $3m Stradbroke, not having raced in more than two months.

“She is a proper horse, her form has been super and she gets into the Stradbroke with no weight (52kg),” Maher said.

“The Stradbroke has always been the plan for her. If she runs to form, she can be in the finish. I know her preparation for a Stradbroke has been a little bit different to most horses.

“But knowing the horse, she will run very well.”

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Semana is one of Ciaron Maher’s three contenders in the Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap. Picture: Getty Images.

The racing industry and cricket have always been closely connected.

As long ago as the 1960s, Peter Burge, the Australian Test batsman, used to accompany West Indian fast bowling great Wes Hall to the Gloucester Park trots after touring games in Perth.

Ricky “Punter” Ponting is an owner of gallopers and greyhounds and he famously went to the dogs in Tasmania the night before he left for the 1997 Ashes tour.

Ponting still smiles at the memory of that night, when he gave his winning greyhound a chomp of a Kit Kat in the back of his car on the way home.

Mark Waugh, who is married to racing trainer Kim, was a harness racing owner who had horses called Hit Wicket and Four More.

One on Ashes tour, Waugh was playing a county game when he was next man into bat when the day started.

Waugh was halfway though listening to one of his horses race at Harold Park in Sydney when there was a dismissal and he had to quickly turn the radio off and go out to bat.

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Semana will be ridden by Group 1-winning Sydney apprentice Dylan Gibbons in the Stradbroke.

Warner and Semana’s connections were given no favours when they draw gate 22 at Tuesday’s barrier draw function in Brisbane’s King George Square.

Semana is one of Maher’s trio of Stradbroke runners – he also has Doomben 10,000 winner Bella Nipotina and Group 1 placegetter Nugget.