FROM STUD AND STABLE Outstanding Field For John Grigg Stakes

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30234, 12 September 1963, Page 4

FROM STUD AND STABLE Outstanding Field For John Grigg Stakes

The racing man’s question of the week: what will win the John Grigg Stakes?

Few are prepared to nominate the winner in one. Very few more can even predict with any certainty what will be favourite.

It te the consensus that the John Grigg Stakes field this year is the strongest on record.

The general pattern is for one or at the most two horses jn the field tn be open class performers at the time. This year there is a competent bunch of than—Magician,

Valuate, Boundless, St. Malo and the filly. Rondabelle. The race is attracting interest far outside the South Island.

The North Island does not appear to be strong in second-season colts, and this is a year in which the Ashburton race could have a strong bearing on the favourtism and the results of the Hawke's Bay and Wellington Guineas. A John Grigg Stakes victory does not put the successful owner far along the road to racing riches. But the Ashburton club’s feature spring race has been of good value as a guide to later classics, and has some distinguished names on its records.

Usually the John Grigg Stakes winner goes on to Wingatui for the Dunedin Guineas, and this double has been carried off by eight horses in the last 14 years. Swayup won both races in 1949 in the hands of C. C. Stokes, who is now training at Riccarton.

Three years later Claude Stokes carried off the same double, this time with Chowder

The next to win the double •was Shahwan. a good galloper owned by Mr H. D. Greenwood, but one unlucky enough to come up against • magnificent filly in Passive, wi» was easily his master in the New Zealand Derby.

Two years after Shahwan, Braganza won the Grigg

Stakes - Dunedin Guineas double for Mr A N. Smith,) and 12 months later the brilliant Cadiz won the double again for Mr Smith.

; Of all the horses that have 1 won those races, Cadiz must be given the top rating, because he has gone to the United States, has won against the best and has earned something like a quarter of a million dollars.

Gold View (1960), Burgos (1961), and Seaend (1962) have lengthened the sequence of victories in both races and have made the Ashburton race of soundest value for i the slightly longer race at 1 Wingatui. Burgos, incidentally, is the only three-year-old in that time to have added the New Zealand Derby as well. Beaumaris, the New Zealand Derby winner in 1949, was runner-up to Swayup at Ashburton and Wingatui. Jalna Retired Jatoa, one of the best stayI ing mares in recent years, and winner of the Wellington iCup in 3min 18sec, has been sold by Mr H. C. Adams to Blandford Lodge Stud. She beat Sparkler, Great Sensation, Fair Filou and two Auckland Cup winners in Marie Brizard and Red Eagle when she set what was Uteri an Australian and New Zealand record in the Trentham two-miler. Altogether she won £12.386. Her other victories included the Desert Gold Stakes and Great Northern Oaks. She is a half-sister to good winners including Special Script, Whiteoaks, and Astrazami.

Jalna is to go to Empire Way.

The Australian jockey, A. (“Scobie”) Breasley was jeered at Epsom last Thursday after five more defeats had brought his losing sequence to 27, the "Daily Mail” said. The newspaper said one punter “with a loud mouth

and short memory,” shouted: I “Why don’t you go back to i Australia?” If Breasley was to follow ' this raucous advice, British racing would be considerably ‘poorer, the paper added. “A Shocker” Australians were told this week that Summer Regent’s run in the Avondale Cup last week would not have won a maiden at Geelong. This is the opinion of an Auckland correspondent of the “Spouting Globe,” Melbourne. This correspondent commented: “For a horse rated almost a good thing to win one of Melbourne’s spring Cups, Summer Regent’s Avondale run on Saturday was a shocker.” Once outright favourite for both the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, Summer Regent has dropped to the fourth line in the Caulfield Cup and the second line in the Melbourne Cup. The Caulfield Cup is still several weeks away, but the odds-layers are giving nothing away.

The odds offering on Tatua for a straight out bet in the Caulfield Cup are 6 to 1. Anyone thinking there is a small fortune to be made from backing Tatua to win both Cups would also be disappointed. The odds offering on Tatua for both Cups is 50 to one. Lei and Summer Regent are both at 14 to one straight out in the Caulfield Cup. Entries Refused The Stewards of the National Hunt Committee have refused to accept further entries for Tunbridge Wells, a five-year-old gelding which has been running in the colours of the town whose name he bears.

Messrs Weai.iherby and Sons have written to trie chairman of the syndicate who lease the horse stating that the Stewards have no reason to believe that the scheme has not been conducted in the best possible way, but that other projects have been stimulated as a result of it, and that some of these are not in the best interests of racing. The Tunbridge Wells syndicate embraces upwards of 200 members and is represen- | taitive of the community, being drawn from .professional people and artisans alike.

The horse, which has won two of its six races and £BO2 8s in prize money since racing in the town’s colours, has given much pleasure to many people. Now there is much disappointment and a feeling of frustration over the Steward’s derision.

In fact it is reported that a number of the local inhabitants who went racing for the first time in their lives to see Tunbridge Wells run and who, as a result, became enthusiastic about steeplechasing, are so embittered that they have said they will not set foot on a racecourse again until what they consider to be an unfair and arbitrary decision is rescinded.

The Tunbridge Wells venture was officially recognised as being the “pilot” scheme and other towns were eager to follow suit if it were approved. “The decision to clamp down on corporate ownership will result in many people taking the view that raring is a privileged sport and that their participation in it is not welcomed,” comments an English writer. It was understandable, this writer said, that at a time when the Stewards of the Jockey Club had several inexplicable cases of suspected doping on their hands, one involving the winner of the Derby, the authorities should be extraordinarily

cartful to whom they issued permits. Attempts might be made by people of dishonest tendencies to form coalitions in order to exploit racehorses. But, as matters stood, there was nothing to prevent four people, assuming that they did not have police records and bad not been “warned off" the racecourse, registering a horse in partnership, or for a group of personable crooks to acquire an animal and persuade a respectable sucker to apply for and assume responsibility of ownership.