09 May 2018 | Greg Hayes
At 9:35pm on Wednesday night, the trip of a lifetime will begin for owner Fred Crews and trainer Brent Lilley as Maori Time flies out of Australia heading for Sweden and the 2018 Elitlopp. The mare is booked on a Boeing 747 Singapore Airlines Cargo Freighter bound for Amsterdam. The plane will touchdown in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and England before making its final stop in the Netherlands.
The flight will take 26 hours and while that length of time in a plane would upset any seasoned traveller, the trip will only be two-thirds complete.
From Amsterdam, Maori Time will board a transport truck and settle in for a 16-hour road trip that will see her take in the German and Danish countryside before she arrives in Sweden. Once she arrives in Sweden she will be transported to the stables of Stig Johansson’s just outside of Stockholm.
So if everything goes to plan, Maori Time will arrive at her new home at Stig’s at around 1:30pm Friday afternoon Australian time which will be 5:30 Friday morning locally.
With the Elitlopp still more than two weeks away trainer Brent Lilley fully expects Maori Time to have recovered from the extended travelling she will encounter over the next two days.
“We were fully aware of what she would have to go through to get to Sweden when we started planning the trip,” Lilley said.
“She is a very relaxed mare and I have no doubt she will handle the travel across to Sweden, that will be the least of our worries I think.
“We are going to be taking on the best trotters in the world and a lot of them don’t have to travel very far at all but this is an experience of a lifetime and I know she is going to do all of us very proud.”
Maori Time is proudly supported by Aldebaran Park
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