RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30528, 25 August 1964, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

DISMISSAL Grand National week now being well in the past, and Cup week still a little ahead, there is a respite for racegoers, some opportunity to save for the next savage assault on the pocket; Racing is sb much a habit that the movements of many of those most closely connected with it can be forecast with far more accuracy than the movements of migratory birds. From Southland, for instance, a well-known trainer has come to Riccarton for the Grand National each year for 40 years. And he is a man of habit. Each evening he observes a strict routine — at 8.45 p.m., a stroll about the city, the purchase of a bag of fruit, return to the hotel, sleep. What more natural for such a man to stop at the same hotel each year, and to cover the same ground on the evening stroll: which leads inevitably to the

purchase of his fruit from the same shop. The fruit business was always done with a Chinese merchant who invariably addressed the trainer as Skipper. And during this Grand National, they met once more. One Friday evening when the Skipper arrived to buy his fruit, the Chinese asked him if he had a winner. Skipper told him he thought that Fireguard would have every chance. He meant on the following Tuesday. The Chinaman backed it on the Saturday. It failed. On Monday evening, Skipper called again, on his usual round. The fruiterer said he thought that Fireguard no good. Skipper said Fireguard was a jumper and he had meant the Tuesday flat race. The fruiterer said he had lost £5 on Fireguard on the Saturday. Skipper said Tuesday should be a different story.

On Wednesday evening, they met again. Fireguard, in the meantime, having been beaten. “That Fireguard, he no good,” said the fruiterer. Skipper looked at the ceiling and said he thought it had been unlucky and that it ought to win on the Saturday. It didn’t. On Monday evening, Skipper was there at the shop again, rather wondering what to say. So he seized the initiative. He told the shopkeeper he was going to take all his horses to China. The fruiterer advised him to take Fireguard to China. Interested, the trainer asked his friend if he thought Fireguard would win if he was taken to China. Oriental calm could not hide the fruiterer’s feelings. "You take Fireguard China," he said. “Bandits might get him."