CANTERBURY PARK CLUB

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27470, 2 October 1954, Page 4

CANTERBURY PARK CLUB

TWO-YEAR-OLD EVENT IN FEBRUARY The committee of the Canterbury Park Trotting Club has decided to include a new race for two-year-olds in the programme for its autumn meeting at Addington on February 12. The race, which will be known as the Canterbury Park Juvenile Stakes, will be run over one mile and a quarter. The committee has suggested that the stake for the race be £750. This will bring the number of two-year-old classics in the South Island to six, the others being the Timaru, Oamaru, New Zealand Welcome, Methven Two-year-old, and New Zealand Sapling Stakes. There will also be one semi-classic, the Canterbury Park Juvenile Handicap. The Canterbury Park Club’s new race will start two-year-old racing in the South Island one month earlier than previously. In the past the first race for horses of this age in the South Island was the Timaru Nursery Stakes in the middle of March. The new race will be run about the time of the Great Northern Trotting Stakes, the first race for two-year-olds in the North Island. The new race will provide further incentive to owners and trainers to race two-year-olds. Until last season, when the Methven Club ran a two-year-old event for the first time, there were only five races for two-year-olds each season in the South Island. The total is now seven, and it appears possible that other clubs will provide races for two-year-olds.