It wasn’t exactly love at first sight when Des Harris met La Mer.

The Copenhagen II- La Balsa filly was having a trial at Waverley and Harris had been booked to ride the then two-year-old by her Bell Block-based trainer Malcolm Smith.

“She jumped out and went to put her head down, so I just tried to settle her, so she didn’t keep trying to buck,” Harris recalled. 

La Mer finished third in that trial without having any real pressure applied but Harris didn’t have to wait long to see just what she could do.

“She had her first start at Woodville and Malcolm rang me and asked me to bring whatever saddle I was going to be using in the race to the track that morning,” Harris said. 

Wary that La Mer might not take too kindly to a light saddle on race day and could attempt another rodeo display, Smith took the element of surprise out of the equation, getting Harris to give the filly a run along using that saddle.

The planning paid dividends and La Mer ran out an easy winner at her debut.  It was the beginning of a lengthy relationship between Harris and the elegant chestnut filly, with Harris riding her in all bar one of her 43 lifetime starts. 

La Mer had dented a few reputations and Harris recalls Brent Thomson being keen to get on the filly, suggesting he would be available should Harris not be able to make the weight next start.   It was not to be, the only person other than Harris to ride La Mer throughout her career was Malcolm Smith’s apprentice Peter Graham who was on board in a sprint at Foxton when La Mer resumed at the beginning of the 1978-79 season.

La Mer burst onto the Central Districts racing scene in a glittering three-start debut season which stretched across a mere five weeks.  Her second start resulted in a dominant seven length win at New Plymouth before she took on the country’s best juveniles in the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes.

Again, La Mer won effortlessly, this time the margin was four lengths with Elton and Vice Regal filling the places behind her.

Having given us a glimpse of what La Mer could do her trainer then took her home and put her aside as he planned an assault on the 1976-77 Filly of the Year title and the pinnacle event, the New Zealand Oaks.

There was just one blot - if you can consider a second placing a blot - on La Mer’s record as an early three-year-old.  After a first-up win in the Gold Trail Stakes, La Mer then went down by three-quarters of a length to So Fox in the Lowland Stakes at Opaki.

Harris put that defeat down to it being the first time the brilliant filly had struck a soft track.  “She got better handling wet tracks as she matured,” he recalled.

The road to the New Zealand Oaks continued with wins in the Desert Gold Stakes (by five lengths); Eulogy Stakes (by six lengths) and the Royal Stakes (four and a half lengths).

Surely, the Oaks was at her mercy, but Harris remembers Smith being concerned that the filly was slowly recovering from a stone bruise.

“He got Royce Dowling to have a look at her and leading into the Oaks, and then, rather than working her up over a mile, he just galloped her over 600 metres,” Harris said.

La Mer’s New Zealand Oaks win is memorable on many levels.  There is the commentary for one.  The legendary Peter Kelly, always so precise and conscious of the picture he was painting for those listening at home, allowed himself to be swept up in the moment.

“You’ve got to see this filly to believe it, she’s put two lengths on them in one flash, a twinkling of the eye…. what a fantastic filly this is,” he called.

Harris agreed that the win was easy.  “When we came round the turn, we were still back and inside Bob Skelton, so I just eased her back and pulled out around him and went – her acceleration was unbelievable,” he said.

La Mer added another two victories to her three-year-old season which, unsurprisingly, saw her crowned the 1977 Filly of the Year.  She took out the Manawatu Breeders’ Stakes over 2000m by five lengths and, after finishing third at weight-for-age in the Awapuni Gold Cup behind Balmerino and Copper Belt, blitzed the Great Northern Oaks field.

Harris recalls Malcolm Smith trying to late scratch the filly on that occasion as she faced another soft track but, in the end, nothing could come close to La Mer that day and she romped away to a ten-length win.

In those glory days of racing, La Mer continued to do battle on the track, both here and in Australia, competing, and often beating, the very best over the following two seasons. 

“The calibre of horses she raced against was amazing, she was an exceptional horse,” Harris recalled.

“She was not a big horse, but she had that tremendous sprint.  I remember one of the jockeys at the time saying to me, ‘we’re all driving minis, but you’ve got a Mercedes’ that was the difference, she was incredible.”

La Mer raced 43 times across her career, winning 24 times, and claiming the 1978-79 Horse of the Year title.  The week prior to her final start, where she downed Mun Lee and Vice Regal in the Ormond Memorial at Hastings, she was sold to Captain Tim Rogers and exported to Ireland.