Key Close To £8000 For Season

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30094, 30 March 1963, Page 5

Key Close To £8000 For Season

Key will take her four-year-old earnings past £BOOO if, as expected, she wins her second Awapuni Gold Gup today. In a brilliant campaign this season, Mr T. C. Lowry’s Fair’s Fair mare has earned £7750. First prize in the Manawatu club’s weight-for-age feature race is worth £lO5O.

The only other Awapuni Gold Cup candidate with an outstanding record for the season is Moy, another Hastings-trained mare. Moy has had a busier season than Key, with more handicap racing, and she has earned £6335. Key has had the better of

Moy each time they have met this season, but there was only half a length between them when Key was second and Moy third behind Stipulate m the weight-for-age Trentham Stakes in January Earlier they met in the Manawatu Challenge Stakes and the Thames Valley Stakes, both at a mile. Key won both races, and Moy did not manage to reach a place in either of them. Connexions of these two good mares were able to dodge each other, with satisfactory results all round, at the Royal meeting at Riccarton last month.

Moy won the Queen Elizabeth Handicap and Key the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes. They have met once in the meantime. That was in the North Island Challenge Stakes, seven furlongs, in which Key was first and Moy fourth.

Key had no engagement on the second day of the Wellington autumn meeting, but Moy returned to handicap racing on that programme and ran third under 9-2 to Silver Pelt (7-4> and Commodore Roberts. Silver Pelt will oppose Moy again today, but on 271 b worse terms. J. T. Anderson has already had four winning rides in the Awapuni Gold Cup. and Key will be widely expected to give him a fifth. Anderson's four wins were in successive years, starting with Berne in 1957, then Bridie, then Picaroon (twice). Picaroon with Anderson up. ran second to Key last year, and to Ilumquh in 1961. Season’s records for the Awapuni Gold Cup favourites are: —

St. 1st 2nd 3rd £ Key 11 6 2 1 ’750 Moy 16 3 2 3 6335