A family thread, three generations deep, runs through New Mexico

It is not every day that a maiden win sends a ripple back through three generations and across a couple of hemispheres, but then New Mexico is no ordinary maiden winner, and Colin Harrison is no ordinary breeder.

It was only her fourth raceday start, and the form told you it was coming. She had banked two slashing seconds at Addington behind some seriously progressive trotters, and that was after a tidy fifth on debut at Winton back in late March. The penny had well and truly dropped.

Williamson had thought a great deal of her long before Sunday, and the maiden only sharpened his opinion.

"After she won, Matthew said we can either turn her out or give her two or three more starts and then a break," Harrison said. "He reckons she can compete with the best three-year-old fillies in the spring."

That is the conversation a breeder dreams of having, and it is the one now shaping New Mexico's winter. She has done all of her early education the right way, the unhurried way, and Harrison would not have it any other.

"We did quite a bit of strong work with her, not real fast, just strong work," he said. "I said to Matthew, I don't mind paying a training bill on this one."

For all the promise in front of her, the story that sits behind New Mexico is the one that makes her so special to the Harrison family. She is the second foal from Tijuana Taxi (Now Another Look), a mare Colin both bred and trained, and a mare who taught him every lesson in patience there is.

Tijuana Taxi did not make it to the races until she was six, and there was a hard luck story behind every one of those waiting years.

"She hooked up on the fence as a three-year-old and took half a front foot away," Harrison said. "She was a long time coming and she never had any confidence. I couldn't put a bell boot on her because the hair never grew back. She was frightened to go half the time, but she could really run."

Run she did, and how. Seven wins later, that patience had been repaid in full.

Sadly Tijuana Taxi is no longer with us, and her loss is still keenly felt.

"She got laminitis," Harrison said. "It was a shame because we would have liked to take a few more foals out of her, but they said the best thing to do was put her down."

That is the bittersweet thread running through this whole family. They give you everything on the track and precious little in the paddock. Tijuana Taxi left just three foals, and each one matters all the more for it.

Her first, a filly by Andover Hall, was a lovely natural trotter who was lost as a yearling. New Mexico is the second. The third, a now two-year-old filly by Orlando Vici, is bred and owned by Colin's son Jason and is already turning Williamson's head down south.

"Matthew's got her down there now," Harrison said. "She's had one prep and she's into another one. She's not as natural a trotter as the other one, but she'll come to it."

Wind the clock back another generation and you arrive at Nancy Lopez (Simon Roydon), the mare who lit the fuse, and a textbook example of Harrison's eye for a bargain.

"I bought her at a yearling sale, the southern one I think it was, for about $3,000," he said.

She had the look of a racehorse and never quite got the chance to be one.

"She showed a hell of a lot of promise. We spent quite a bit of money on vets trying to find out what was wrong, but we couldn't track it down."

Whatever the track was denied, the breeding barn delivered. Nancy Lopez left three foals and three winners, which is a strike rate any commercial operation would take.

The first was Mexican Invasion (Armbro Invasion), a winner of 20 who reached Group Three company in Australia, where she now stands as a broodmare. True to type, she has proven a shy producer herself, leaving just the one winner and not a live foal since 2017.

Harrison, for his part, did not hang on to the racemare for long.

"Brian Norman rang me up. I said I'd want $20,000 thinking he wouldn't be interested, and he said he'd take it," Harrison said, still amused by it. "Money talks."

Next came the gelding Overstayer (Thanksgiving), a dual winner cut from the most honest cloth.

"He was just an honest horse," Harrison said. "He always gave you 100%. He didn't have much, but he gave you 100% of what he had."

Then came Tijuana Taxi, the third and final foal, and the link in the chain that leads us to Sunday.

For anyone tempted to write this off as a lucky few dollars at a yearling sale, the page underneath tells a richer tale. Nancy Lopez was out of Arnies Folly (Arndon), a full sister to none other than Arnees Frolic (Arndon), the 1989 New Zealand 3YO Trotting Filly of the Year.

Arnees Frolic ran second to Idle Pride in that season's New Zealand Trotting Stakes, the race we now know as the New Zealand Derby, for Fred Fletcher. The two sisters were bred and foaled in North America before being exported home when Sir Roy McKenzie and Roydon Lodge were at the absolute peak of their powers, dragging New Zealand's trotting genetics forward by leaps and bounds.

This is real blood, and across the generations it keeps finding a way to show itself.

Then again, Colin Harrison was always going to know a good horse when one turned up.

He has spent a lifetime around them, and the record bears it out in surprising fashion. He trained 39 winners in New Zealand and drove a further dozen, but the most eye-catching line in his story sits half a world away.

Harrison is one of the select band of established New Zealand horsemen likely to have driven more winners in North America than in his own country, with 157 visits to the winner's circle there for better than $458,000 in stakes. The modern face of that rare feat is Dexter Dunn, who only last season pushed his American tally past the 2,226 wins he had banked at home, and it is exclusive company to keep.

As it happens, the wanderlust runs in the Harrison family too. Colin's cousin, Kelvin Harrison, has forged a distinguished career of his own across nearly 40 years stateside.

The American chapter began, as these things so often do, with a phone call. Harrison was working for Kevin Holmes, who had a star juvenile on his hands in Testing Times (Schell Hanover), a horse who had bolted in 12 of his 15 starts as a two-year-old, the Group One Tatlow Memorial in Victoria and the Group Two Kindergarten Stakes among them.

Holmes fancied a crack at the States and wanted Harrison alongside him.

"He rang me and asked if I'd work for him," Harrison said. "I hopped on the plane with a heap of horses and went up."

The American air did not agree with Testing Times, who took ill not long after arriving and, by Harrison's recollection, was never quite the same horse again. Even so, he was a tough customer to the last, retiring with 38 wins and 60 placings to his name.

When Holmes headed home after a year, Harrison stayed put, taking a private training role for multi-millionaire owner Sam Green and wintering a team at Pompano.

He drove principally at Liberty Bell and Brandywine, and he kept the very best company the sport had to offer.

"There are some very, very good horsemen up there," he said. "Cat Manzi was one I got pretty close to. He drove 13 or 14,000 winners, a very good horseman."

On a given night the drivers' room might also hold the likes of John Campbell and Bill O'Donnell, and Harrison held his own among them.

That chapter shaped the man, and it shaped the family too, because his son Jason was born in North America. Harrison went back for a nine-month stint in 2005 to catch up with old friends and his cousin Kelvin, and could not resist adding a few more drives to the tally while he was at it.

If harness racing is in the Harrison blood, it has been there for the best part of a century. Colin's grandfather, Tom Harrison, bred and owned Loyal Nurse, the winner of the 1949 New Zealand Cup.

Jason has caught the bug every bit as badly. He went and secured the former New Zealand 2YO Filly of the Year Classical (Soky's Atom), and has bred her final foal, a filly by Locharburn who traces directly back to Loyal Nurse herself.

For a family with this much shared history, you could not script a filly carrying more sentiment.

Father and son have shared plenty of good days at the track, and Harrison still lights up at the memory of the first.

"We've raced a lot together and had a few winners," he said. "The first one was at Addington back in the early 90s. I've never seen anybody so excited in my life. He jumped into the birdcage. That's when you still went into the birdcage in the old days."

It has not all been birdcages and bunting. Harrison has lived with Parkinson's for 17 years now, and it is only lately starting to get the better of him. He let his licence lapse last season, and there is no false bravado about why.

His last training win, in a touch of poetry the family will treasure, came when Tijuana Taxi saluted at Oamaru.

"I was 65 I think. It was a good time to hang it up," he said. "I miss the training, but I just can't do it anymore."

All of which is exactly why a filly like New Mexico means what she means. She is a tonic, a reason to keep one eye firmly on the spring, and Harrison knows she could not be in better hands.

"I'm very lucky to have Matthew as a trainer," he said. "He's a top fellow."

If she keeps furnishing the way she has, the spring shapes as something to look forward to, with an Oaks campaign the kind of target that gives a man every reason to keep looking up the road.

It would be one more chapter in a family story that already runs three generations deep and stretches clean across the world, and on Sunday's evidence, the best of it might still be in front of them.