WHEEL AND TRACK NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 174, 25 July 1928, Page 16

WHEEL AND TRACK NOTES.

(By ORION.) i>■ . 'j.mi. who was a good sprinter a »-<mj*. "i mmmjiis ago, is again in work in tlir >■ mtli. She has joined C. S. Dona Ill's team. Laplander, w.io r-to;>; e,l 2.1*1 2-5 to run tecond to Okourt in a mile saddle race at the Timaru meeting in Marca, is now one of F. G. Holmes' tegm. Kohara. the winner of the last New /".li.iii'l i '![>. i- tu :tu ;:ivc:i a special prcp.i; a I >ii lor next hai-oii'. fixture. fii»' Mack ;>a■•('r will, however. find himself very clot?e to pome good ones. Sarill,i. who won the Flying Handicap at Ili'.imoiid (New South Wales I on • la!\ i- ri.-ing 20 years. He started at •i l«'i:u ! ■■■>■''. •''' l i la-tod just long enough :.i w in !'V a hea 1. John Mauritius is still laid aside as a iv-u!t o? the injuries he received in a rare at Forbury l'ark early in the season, and it is not likely to race for some time. Black Admiral is doing slow jogging work under M. B. Edwards' care at Yaldhurst. but will not be subjected to any strong work for some weeks. The New Zealand (.'up will Ik: his special mission. Owing to tbe heavy rain there has been ho work done at Epsom for some days. Those horses emraced at the Metropolitan meeting at Vldington have lieen doing a lot of road exercise, and all arc well forward to he finished off. Tamerlane has dune a good deal of -a-dug aii unsound horse, hut there '•= nn don't* 1 'it that hi- is a modi better trotter than at the beginning of the reason. After the Aueklan Club"' meeting la*: month Tamerlane nad a short <*pell. but he is back again in work at New !:'rigiiti'ii and :!!y well. Hai'\<Mawah. one o; the troiting stal'io:i» imported by t lie We-t Australian T-otting A<-o-i itii.n, after fading at the trottinfr i- paying hV w-iy • f beini' c inverted to 11 i" pa "e. At a ■harity meeting in Perth he won the Leonora Handicap, one mile five furlough. at a 2.2f>i gaif. Ahuriri. thougn -till carrying a good leal of cor:ditio:i. i- -aid to be getting through a I it of string work at Oakhampton • Lodge, and w'll be given a raee, perhaps two. at Addington next month. The C'aiaodral Chimes horse has already v.on tho New Zealand ( uii. and w'.il make ;:n attempt in November to no" -h .hit* third win. Tf set for (lie International Handicap. mil", on the opening day of the Metropolitan meeting. Western King will get solid support from Auckland"?-. The bay paoi-r has been showing plenty of siu-cd in hi- workouts at Epsom, and ilf the limit it will take a smart one to '•cat him. Trotting trainer-- ami drivers who intend to apply for licenses during the coining sra-on arc reminded that their applicafion- should have been made by June 30. A great number have rot vet made application for renewal of their old license-! and anv further delav at the present time tuav find them short of the iiece-sarv ••brief when the new season commences. It is a matter that requires immediate attention. ;i-;iin.'- T,. F. will probably race Tmprint. Marshal Neil and I. u : - : ana at tne A.ugust meeting at Addington. Imprint raced last month at Auckland and although short of work pa'-ed good race- and should be it Im-- Kp,. r Tiny* no n-It. T.npr ; "t is a good horse- on heavy tracks. Marshal Neil is a promising pacer who has not been too 111:■ ky in lii~ racing, but he is likely to improve. Louisiana is a pood frotter, who, however, does not always go «-tcadily. CUP CANDIDATES AT ADDINGTON. Although the New Zealand Cup does not conic up for decision till November next, and nominations do not close for some time yet, it is interesting to note, in view of the fact that the limit of the race has been lixed at 4.26, howMr. Brinkman has handicapped the ten cup eligible* who are engaged at the approaching August meeting of the Metropolitan Trotting Club. In the August Handicap, 4.30 limit, and which is the big event on tbe opening daye programme. Mr. Brinkman had 27 horses to handicap, but LS of them are not eligible for the New Zealand Cup. and at present need not be considered in connection with the big race in November. This leaves nine Cup eligible*, and with Native Chief, who is in the Queen Mary Handicap, we have ten. Unless one or more of the ten should happen To win next month it is unlikely Mr. Brinkman will make any departure from his present assessments when he comes to handicap the same horses in the Cup, and assuming this to be the position the following would be the handicaps in the New Zealand Cup of those eligibles who are booked to race at Addington next month: — Native Chief (4.34), limit. Queen's Own (4.25), limit. Talaro (4.24 3-5), limit. Dalnahine (4.28 4-5), 12yds. Terence Dillon (4.25), 12yds. Kohara (4.25), 12yds. Jewel Pointer (4.23 3-5), i4yds. Imprint (4.25 3-5), 24yds. Waitaki Girl (4.22), 24yds. Ahuriri (4.25), 36yds.

* HANDICAPPING PROBLEM. In handicapping Great Bingen on 2.8 in the International Handicap, one mile, to be run on the opening day of the Metropolitan meeting, Mr. Brinkman has presented students of form with a knotty problem, and it will be interest- i ing to see how he sums up Great Bingen and .lewel Pointer when he has to handicap the pair on the second day of the fixture, when both are engaged in a fast mile and a-quarter race. At the Auckland winter meeting in June both <»reat Bingen and Jewel Pointer were entered for the Cornwall Handicap, a race similar to the International Handicap. in that the limit was 2.13. Mr. Paul nad to make the handicap, and he a*ked Jewel Pointer to concede Great Bingen 12yds, the respective marks being Gr<rat Bingen 48yds, Jewel Pointer 60yds. In placing Jewel Pointer on a 2.8 mark it I was generally considered that Mr. Paul had been a trifle hard upon him, but the point to be remembered was that twice Jewel Pointer had beaten Great Bingen when the pair had been handicapped on the same mark, and in fairness to Great Bingen, he had to receive 12yds from the Aucklander. Great Bingen did not start, and Jewel Pointer was beaten out of a place each day. Now at the approaching meeting at Addington, Mr. Brinkman, probably very correctly, handicaps Great Bingen on 2.S in the International Handicap. Fortunately or unfortuately, take it how you will, Jewel Pointer was not nominated for that race, but the pair are engaged in ten furlongs events on the second and third days. It may be tfcat Mr. Brinkman will place the pair on the same mark, but that would hardly be fair to Great Bingen, seeing that Jewel Pointer has beaten him twice. On the other hand, if Jewel Pointer is to give Mr. McKenzie's horse a start, then it means the Auckland champion is going to be harshly treated ii Great Bingen's mark is to be a 2.8 gait, because Jewel Pointer's best is a 2.9 gait. At all distances, from one mile to two miles, Great Bingen has faster records than Jewel Pointer, and it will be interesting to note how the pair are nandicapped in the mile and a-quarter on the second day of the gathering.

SOLD FOR £200.

It is putting the matter mildly to say that' followers of harness racing were >hocked when thev read the other day that The Harvester, 2.1. once champion of trotting stallions and sold for £15.000 to (_'. K. G. Billings after his turf career ended, had been sold for a paltry £200 at the recent dispersal sale of the late Paul Kuhn's Forest Park stud in Indiana. It called to mind the sale of .Jay Gould, another champion stallion, for £10 at auction in New York many years ago. But the great horse, for whom the man Jay Gould, with Jim Fisk and Charles H. Kerner. had given a small fortune when he was at the top of his form, was in the sere and yellow leaf, crippled with rheumatism and long pa=t all usefulness at the time Jimmy O'Neill, a warm-hearted Irish bookmaker who had once won a feuhundred on the old horse, made the only bid that saved him from going to the dead horse dock, where a bullet ends the misery of New York's equine wrecks. The Harvester, however, is still sound and vigorous and younger by three years than Guy Axworthy, 2.8 J. a trotting sire that commands a stud fee of £400, or twice the sum for which Th" Harvester was sold. True, he is no such sire of early and extreme speed as the horse that is credited with four 2.0 trotters and the winners of the only two races for the Hambletonian Stakes yet decided. but his rank is nevertheless high among other living stallions. Probably the best guess as to why nobody wanted The Harvester is that the demand for stud horses is to-day about- the narrowest ever known and that it s«ems to be strictly limited to scions of the Axworthy and Peter the Great families, with a preference for those that combine the bluod of both. The Harvester has the blood of neither.—New York "Tribune."

PACERS TO TROTTERS,

Henry Ten Kyek White, a prominent American writer in "Trotter and Pacer," has the following to say under the above heading:— "The job of making a trotter out of a pacer was iirst successfully done in IS4!>. when PeU»am 2.28 (then the world's trotting record) made his bow to the public. He was originally a pacer, and his success so stimulated the trainer's of those days that although toeweights i the first tool a professor of gait conversion looks for) were unknown, even undreamed of, the hoys did pretty well, and at the end of four years (1 5.33) another world's champion trotter that had been a pacer was produced in Highland Maid, who reduced the terrestial mark for trotters ,to 2.27. Smuggler 2.15}. champion trotting stallion. was a converted pacer, but, contrary to general belief at the time, his change of gait was not caused by the use of toe-weights, heavy shoes alone doing the trick. In these days the books are plentifully besprinkled with the names of trotters that also have scored officially at the pace, and vice versa, one of the latter sort that will out this season being Grey Brewer 2.8J, trotting as a two-year-old in 1920. a real good racehorse for her age. Being by a trotting sire (David Guy 2.5 1 ;). and from a pacing dam (Zombrewer 2.41),' Grey Brewer has the credentials for performing well at either gait, and she undoubtedly will get a much faster record on the pace than she acquired as a baby trotter. Anna Bradford's Girl took a two-year-old record unedr 2.9 as a trotter, and the next season did 2.1 on the pace, and won a lot of races. Way back in IS9S a tiilly called Extasv set the mark for two-year-old pacers at 2.10}. yet the next campaign she was a whale of a three-year-old trotter, winning a fourth heat I in the Kentucky Futurity in 2.11 J. which mile was a championship performance of some sort, as I distinctly recall hearing announced at the time."