FROM STUD AND STABLE His First Ellerslie Mount Was A Winner

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30951, 6 January 1966, Page 4

FROM STUD AND STABLE His First Ellerslie Mount Was A Winner

The Washdyke trainer-jockey, B. T. Jones, had no luck on his first trip to Ellerslie with his good stayer, Fieldmaster.

But he found one other aspect of the northern trip memorable. When J. R. Dowling decided to return south after the first two days of the meeting, the Otaki trainer, M. N. Seal, had to engage a replacement for Hermaion in the Grafton High-weight, the first race on the card on Auckland Cup day.

Fifteen years earlier, almost to the day, Barry Jones, then 15 years old, won a race on Fo’c’sle for Seal’s stable at Tauherenikau. Seal invited Jones to do the right thing by the stable for a second time last Saturday. Borrowed Gear

Jones did not go north with any hopes or intentions of taking race rides, and he did not have all the gear required for race riding. But K. Reggett supplied the necessary pieces of raceriding equipment, and Jones went out on Hermaion to achieve quite a notable first —a winner at his first ride on the course.

Then he returned the gear to Reggett, who, an hour and a half later, earned fame with a skilful winning ride on Hermaion’s stablemate Apa, in the £15,500 Auckland Cup.

To make the day more memorable still for the Seal stable Empire King won at Hastings half an hour before Hermaion’s high-weight victory at Ellerslie. “Burglars” Dr. A. McGregor Grant, president of the Auckland Racing Club, had Apa and the connexions of the Gabador gelding mainly in mind when he said in jest at the Auckland Cup presentation that the visitors from the southern half of the North Island were “a lot of burg-lars-—they eome here and take the lot.” Wins later in the afternoon by Prince d’Amour (Great Northern Foal Stakes), Maria Mitchell (Railway Handicap), and Tipperary Tom (Resolution Handicap) were more humiliating blows for the Auckland and Waikato best. Sobig’s expensive failure in the Auckland Cup could have reshaped the future programme of the big four-year-old.

Fast Gallop Sobig ran one of the fastest six-furlong gallops ever recorded at Takanini the day before the Auckland Cup.

Old-timers in Auckland cannot remember a faster gallop than Sobig’s lmin 12 3-5 sec, and at least one of them said he felt that the

horse was in the wrong race —that the big sprint event, the Railway Handicap, was the race for him. He could have been right Sobig’s gallop was a “secret” gallop in that it did not appear in any newspapers, but details of it were supplied by his owner, Mr Gordon Mitchell, on Auckland Cup morning. “We know he has the legs of anything else in the field, but we feel less sure that he will stay the distance,” Mr Mitchell said prophetically.