TROTTING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 135, 9 June 1932, Page 16

TROTTING.

AUCKLAND MEETING. TRAINERS GETTING BUSY. NOMINATIONS TO-MORROW. The recent wet weather has not been favourable to trainers who have horses in preparation for the winter meeting which opens at Alexandra Park on Wednesday, June 22. However, the cinder track can be worked upon in any weather, and, though trainers pre.."' the clay for fast work, the cinders provide good going. Just at present the Epsom stables are not particularly strong, but there are several good horses in work who promise to be at their best form this month. Nominations for all events at the meeting close tomorrow at 5 p.m. with Mr. A. G. Mabee, the secretary. At the same time entries close for the 1933 Great Northern Derby. TAKING TIME. The roan mare Miss Joan Direct, brought out from England some months back, has done a fair amount of work besides having a race at the Auckland autumn meeting, but she is not showing quite the dash her trainer, F. Smith, expected. It is evident she has not yet become thoroughly acclimatised, but she is in that condition when she may be expected to hit form at any time. NO IDLE MOMENTS. L. Mitchell is not exactly making a pet of the two-year-okl Nellota, and the daughter of Nelson Bingen is being kept in steady work. In the couple of starts she has had in races she has not begun satisfactorily, and her trainer has been educating her to go away from a llatfooted start. Nellota has a line turn of speed, and she should be a good sort next season.

AMERICA'S CHAMPION SIRE

The following interesting particulars of Peter Volo, recognised as the best sire ot' trotters in America, are taken from an article in Sydney "Sportsman." Peter Volo is now twenty-one years of age, at which age his sire l'eter the Great was sold for £10,000, a price never before or since received for a stallion of that age. Peter Volo upset the idea that early racing is a detriment to a horse as a sire. He started racing against time as a yearling, when he reduced the trotting record for .1 colt of that age to '2.19. As a two-year-old he won all the Futurities and swept through the season with an unbroken record, reducing the ago record from 2.7% to 2.4V1-. As a three-year-old he had another unbeaten campaign, reducing the record from 2.4% to 2.3V4. As a four-year-old lie won all his races but one. reducing the record for that age from 2.3'/4 to 2.2. He was then retired to the stud, and there was a rush to breed to him. On lus reputation his sire, Peter the Great, then 21 years old, was sold for £10,000. Peter Volo. as an early sire, was a failure. Although gilt-edged mares were bred to him, the progeny were of no account, and nt last few outside mares were sent to him. Looking gaunt and nojjflectcd, lie was put tip to auction and failed to reach the reserve price. He was then purchased privately by the Walnut Hall Farm, one of the leading trotting establishments in America. Not being in good physical condition, it took several seasons to get him into satisfactory shape. Year after year his stock did no good, and just as the Walnut Ilall Farm was thinking of retiring him from their stud list, his turn came. In 1927 he sired the sensational two-year-old filly Hanover's Bertha, who reduced the record for that age to 2.2. Peter Volo has now sired four two-minute trotters. One of them. Protector, made a record of 1.59 1 /4, as a three-year-old. in a heat of a contested race. His stud fee, £200. is far ahead of any other trotting stallion in America. As regards early racing being a detriment to success in after years at tlie stud, few horses have had a more strenuous time than Peter Volo- from the yearling stage up to four-year-old. In his races he had to contest heat after heat in an afternoon.

FORGED TICKETS.

The West Australian Trotting Association lias for some time suspected that a system of fraud has been going on in regard to forged complimentary tickets. A successful trap was laid. Marked money was handed to a man under suspicion, and he in return, is said to have handed over a forged ticket. Though admission to the paddock is 7/6, tickets were being sold for 5/. ' Taken to the administrative offices, the marked money and forged tickets were found in his possession. Making a clean breast of it, he implicated others. The association reckons it was being robbed to the tune of about £1000 a year.

IN SCOTLAND,

An English paper says a new cinder trotting track, grandstands and loose boxes, are being constructed in Edinburgh at a cost of £20.000. It is intended to commence operations immediately. It was from Scotland that the late Robert Wilkin, of New Zealand, purchased the American-bred trotting stallion Berlin, and Andrew Town, of Richmond, N.S.W., purchased Childe Harold, the father of trotting in New South Wales. Childe Harold cost Andrew Town £1500. For the past 50 years Scotland has dabbled in trotting with the descendants of American trotters, but as in England it has never really taken on. They appear to be now taking the sport seriously in Edinburgh.