From Stud And Stable WASTEFUL SPENDING ON COURSE BUILDING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 4

From Stud And Stable WASTEFUL SPENDING ON COURSE BUILDING

A Western Southland farmer will have some costly farm buildings available on his property soon. He is the owner of the Wairio racecourse, which will be vacated by both the racing and trotting clubs this season.

The decision of the Wairio Jockey Club to race at Riverton in future and the Wairio Trotting Club to make its headquarters at Winton comes within a short time of an expensive building programme on the Wairio racecourse. This, of course, gives point to the opinion that there has been nothing more wasteful in racing in the last few years than the attempts of some .country clubs to indulge in “champagne tastes on beer incomes.” If the Wairio clubs had, earlier, seen the advantages of regionalisation and the disadvantages of a wasteful duplication of expensive racing plant on country courses, they would have been saved the expense of a new grandstand and offices valued at £ll,OOO, and a totalisator house worth £3BOO. Buildings on the course are insured for a total value of £18,600, and little of it is likely to be recovered. The grandstand and totalisator houses, mainly concrete structures, would be

almost Impossible to remove, and are of little • use other than the purpose which they now fulfil. With the end of racing at Wairio the racecourse will be used solely for farming. The course is owned by Mr D. G. Adams and is held on a lease in perpetuity by the clubs. It is not intended to renew the lease after the expiry date for this year, December 31. The Wairio clubs have made the first full step towards centralisation in Otago and Southland. The Winton Jockey Club has raced at Invercargill in the last few years, but the Winton Trotting Club has remained in its home district. Riverton, the venue for future Wairio galloping meetings, is the best country course in Southland, and visitors to the successful Riverton meeting at Easter have been astounded to learn that there have been only three days’ racing a year on the course. Heavy Entries Five hundred and twentysix entries have been received for the 1967 national yearling sales and it will be necessary to conduct them over a three-

day period in two separate sessions. Entries for the first session have been selected on vendors’ averages within the previous three sales. In the first session there will be 401 lots catalogued for sale, and there will be 125 in the second session. All vendors submitting lots in the first session have been vendors at the 1964, 1965, or 1966 sales. The balance of 125 lots to be offered in the second session comprise entries from vendors who have not sold previously or who have not offered a yearling with the last three sales, or who have catalogued yearlings but have not sold within that period. Record Price Mr Charles W. Engelhard, who races on a spectacular scale in the United States and Great Britain, was also a buyer on a spectacular scale at auctions last month. His American agent, Mr M. Miller, recently bought the four-year-old mare Admiring for 310,000 dollars—the highest bid in the history of horse auctions. Later it was reported that Rokeby Stable was a partner

tn this transaction, but even giving Mr Engelhard only half-credit for Admiring’s price, he had spent 793,500 dollars at auctions in a few weeks. Winner of seven races, including the ArlingtonWashington Lassie Stakes, and earner of 184,581 dollars, Admiring is by Hail to Reason out of the great mare. Searching. Won A Million Until the afternoon of Saturday, August 20, there were five horses —Kelso, Round Table, Carry Back, Nashua, and Citation—which had racing earnings over one million dollars. Now there are six. The sixth is Mr Ogden Phipps’s Buckpasser, which made racing history at Saratoga that afternoon with a brilliant victory in the ninetyseventh running of the Travers, oldest three-year-old stakes race in America. By earning 53,690 dollars of the 82,600-dollar gross purse the great son of Tom Fool, Busanda, by War Admiral, became the first three-year-old to earn one million dollars. His total is 1,038,369 dollars. In this, his ninth win in a row, he equalled the track record of 2min 1 3-ssec for a mile and a quarter. To win he had to pick up 12 lengths in the last six furlongs. In his career. Buckpasser has started 21 times and has won 18 races. He was the two-year-old champion last year with record earnings of 568,096 dollars.