AUSTRALIAN MEETINGS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27912, 8 March 1956, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN MEETINGS

OPPORTUNITIES FOR N.Z. OWNERS MR E. WARD IMPRESSED (From the Australian Correspondent of "The Press") MELBOURNE, March 5. Australian racing has a new' convert in Mr E. Ward, owner of the brown gelding Cambridge, now a fancied runner tor the Australian Cup next Monday week. Mr Ward, a hotelkeeper from Levin, has not been here before, and made this trip more or less as an experiment. But whatever the result, he intends to return next time with middle-distance horses and staying fillies. He is convinced that the opportunities are almost boundless for the owner who will concentrate on middledistance horses.

He said: “I’m not so sure that New Zealand springers are superior to the Australian. In fact I doubt very much if they are. because you have a fair number of fast horses here, both youngsters and older horses.

"But I do think that our staying horses are of a hieher standard. I know’ a lot of New Zealand horses who could win races here, and I reckon that if their owners realised the potentials of Australian racing they would rush them across. “Stake money is very good in New’ Zealand: apparently your meetings away from the cities are not as well endowed as ours m that regard.” Mr Ward said. •‘But I did not realise from anything 1 had read just how the betting side of racing was organised.

“We have the totalisator. and it cannot be compared with the bookmakers if the object of running a horse is to effect a coup. Apparently owners here can invest thousands of pounds at the good price before the public follow’s and makes its hets at the shorter price. "I’m not a betting man, but there are many in New Zealand who would welcome the chance there is on Australian racecourses to try to win big money,’’ said Mr Ward.

Cambridge is a stablemate of King’s Fair in John Mitchell’s care.

Improvement with Age Cambridge is by Foxbridge. Probably H e will be a better proposition as a five-year-old. At least that is the opinion of his owner, who is not overenthusiastic about Cambridge’s prospects in the Australian Cup. Mr Ward w’ould be better pleased if the race was one mile and three-quarters or so. instead of tw’o miles one and a half furlongs.

Mr Ward learned his racing from his father, who was at one time in the stables of a celebrated New Zealand trainer. R. J. Mason. Mason made many trips to Australia with Gloaming. Mr Ward supplements this racing knowledge with a well-above-average knowledge of breeding. He is familiar with most of the winner-producing strains in New Zealand and Australia. He has put this knowledge to very practical use. In his career as an owner nf racehorses, he has bought nine yearlings—and each is a winner. Probably there are very few other men in either country who have such a record. It is an accepted average in Australia that only 60 per cent, of the yearlings which pass through the sale rings ever reach the racecourses at all.

Cambridge will be the "hope of the side” for Mitchell, now that King’s Failwill miss the Newmarket Handicap. H was sheer bad luck that King’s Fair should develop a bruised heel after the Oakleigh Plate. Fit and well, he wouk have won the Newmarket beyond doubt He certainly would have won the Futurity Stakes, which was run on Saturday at Caulfield, and won by The Orb from Beau Chief and Kingster. Because of the way the race was run. King’s Fair would have been near the lead all the way, and it is very doubtful whether any Australian sprinter now in training could have matched his normal finishing run.

Somerset Fair is progressing well since his run at Caulfield. He will be seen in action next Saturday at Flemington in the Queen’s Plate. A partowner. Mr A. Millen, said at the weekend that Somerset Fair had pleased the stable since the Caulfield race.