ANOTHER SCEPTRE?

ROCKFEL BEST OF YEAR

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, November 10. Sir Hugo Cunliffe-Owen's great filly, Rockfel, set the seal on a remarkable three-year-old career by winning the Aintree Derby yesterday. By all Turf enthusiasts she is acclaimed the best of her age in this country, if not the best in the world. Rockfel won the One Thousand Guineas and the Oaks; beat Pasch, the Two Thousand and Eclipse winner, m the Champion Stakes; and yesterday trounced Foxglove II (winner of the Jockey Club Cup, Ebor Handicap, and Ascot Gold Vase), Challenge (second in St. Leger and Jockey Club Stakes winner), and that good filly Bombay Duck. Her . winnings total over! £20,000. Over the 1 mile and 5 furlongs of the Aintree Derby, Rockfel, ridden by j Harry Wragg, went to the front at flagfall and remained there until the end. The efforts of the opposition to get to her in the straight were fruitless and the filly won easily by three j lengths from Bombay Duck. Wragg did not have to touch Rockfel with the whip. He sat quite still in the straight, while the others came

almost level with him four furlongs from home. Then Wragg, with the slightest movement of his arm, urged trie filly on, and she, seeming to know that the time, had come to win her race, strode, /away, from the others as if . they were ' standing still..'' When' horse • and rider returned" to the unsaddling enclosure they found that the crowd had formed a guard o£ honour, arid -through, the cheering throng they walked with this great filly showing little signs of having just returned from a race,

Harry Wfagg said: "I have never ridden before any horse of her class, There is no need even to think of showing Her the whip.- She is just a perfect racing machine. When I pulled heir" together as they;got to me halfway?; up the straight, on she went in' the^smoothdst possible style to win easily by three lengths. As you saw she was never headed." Bockfel's career began in a selling race, which she did not win. She could have been claimed for a hundred or two . after that defeat! But her owner- developed an affection for her. Roekfel is to be kept in training another season and will attempt to win the Ascot Gold Cup next year. She has proved herself champion. of her age, and racing men, who once pointed disparagingly to her plain head and light, narrow neck, now enthuse over her beautiful galloping action and greyhound build. They are comparing her to those famous fillies of the past, Sceptre and Pretty, Polly. She is a daughter of Felstead, Sir H, Cunliffe-Owen's 1928 Derby winner.