EIGHT WINS, 36 PI AGES

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30540, 8 September 1964, Page 4

EIGHT WINS, 36 PI AGES

Happy Birthday Retired “The Press** Special Service INVERCARGILL, Sept. 7. Happy Birthday, which proved herself a capable race mare, is to be retired and mated, with Bellborough seven-year-old by Kurdistan from the Royal Chief mare, Royal Birthday, Happy Birthday is a haff-sister to winners in Friar’s Birthday and Birthright. In a racing careerextending over five seasons, Happy Birthday won eight races and was 36 times placed for £3726 in stakes from 84 starts. Happy Birthday was trained for most of her career by R. J. Cochrane for her owner-breeder, Mr T. M. Kelly. As a two-year old she had 12 starts, winning three —the Salmagundi and Simper Stakes at Invercargill, and the Autumn Nursery Handicap at Riccarton. She won three races the next season as a three-year-old, but one of her best efforts was* a second to the season’s top filly. Challen, in the New Zealand Oaks, in which she was beaten by half a length. Now a seven-year-old, Happy Birthday raced at the Eastern Southland Hunt and Otago Hunt meetings, finishing third on each occasion.

Apparel Has Injured Knee The Ricearton trainer, J. S. Shaw, has accepted with Apparel for the Ashburton meeting on Saturday, but there is no certainty that Mr H. D. Greenwood’s Cassock gelding will be able to fulfil his engagement. Apparel injured the knee of his near foreleg about a week ago. The injury has not caused him to lose any work and the knee has been responding to treatment but the swelling is taking longer than was hoped to subside.

Apparel would be one of the last-start form runners in the Methven Improvers’ Handicap field. He began his five-year-old rating promisingly with a tMrd among the hack sprinters at Riccarton last month. That was in the Woolston Handicap, his lone race at the Grand National meet-