FEATURE
Shenae Lowings and Zaaki clear a fence, the pair aiming for the 2028 Olympics. (Scott Barbour/Racing Photos)
W hen Zaaki ran his 48th and final race in early 2024, he left the track with a record that spoke for itself: 15 wins, four Group 1s, six Group 2s, including the 2021 and 2022 Champions Stakes and 2022 All-Star Mile, and more than $11 million in prizemoney. Trained by Annabel Archibald (nee Neasham), the British-born gelding had been one of Australian racing’s great entertainers – confident, arrogant in the best possible sense, and utterly brilliant. But the story didn’t end there. Zaaki is now competing at the elite eventing level under Australian
Olympian Shenae Lowings – and his new connections believe the 11-year-old has what it takes to contest the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. “It’s been a great journey, and he’s turning out to be as much of a champion in eventing as he was on the racetrack, so it’s really exciting,” Lowings said. The path from Archibald’s stable to Lowings’s care took Zaaki through the hands of accomplished eventer Charlie Richardson, who began the patient work of retraining a horse whose entire education had been about going as fast as possible in a straight line. The transition
wasn’t without its challenges. Jumping, it turned out, was not initially among Zaaki’s strengths. “Annabel told me he wasn’t very good over the jumps at the track – he was quite scared of them and didn’t really know what he was doing,” Lowings said. “When I got him, it definitely was a bit of a process. He wanted to be really careful, which means he didn’t want to knock the poles down.” Careful turned out to be the foundation for something exceptional. Once Zaaki understood what was being asked of him, something clicked.
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