Fremont Likely Cup Starter

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31501, 16 October 1967, Page 4

Fremont Likely Cup Starter

Fremont is almost certain to run in the New Zealand Cup at Riccarton next month and he is an obvious fancy for the first twomile race of the season with 7-13.

“We were not thinking much about taking him to Riccarton but of course it is different now.” said Fremont’s Levin trainer and part-owner, Mr H. W. Lyda, after his strong High Rank gelding won the $6OOO Wellington Handicap at Trentham on Saturday.

Without camera assistance nine out of 10 judges might have settled for a triple deadheat.

Fremont won by half a head from the ’flying ’ Laramie, with Point Duty only a nosf back third. Laramie secured a ciear rails run precious seconds too late to reach Fremont in time.

Laramie carried 8-9 and has one pound more in the New Zealand Cup. in which he will meet Fremont 51b better. Laramie, like Fremont, is the

product of a mare by Balloch, which was the leading b/ood mare sire last season.

Fremont has been ridden in most of his races as well as in all his training by the former Riccarton light-weight, N. Eastwood.

Eastwood had some critics of his tactics on Fremont after the Levin stayer ran fourth at Masterton last Saturday week, but he feels he was judged wrongly.

“I rode Fremont no differently at Masterton from what I did today—the only difference was that he was a fitter horse today,” Eastwood said after the Wellington Handicap.

Eastwood said Fremont blew hard after each gallop during the week, but with training and his race at Masterton the powerful five-year-old had been brought to something like peak fitness.

Like most spring handicaps over a bit of ground the Wellington Handicap produced nothing in the way of early pace. Rather than run the risk of pulling Point Duty about from one of the wider barrier positions, R. B. Marsh allowed the favourite to run away to a lead of six lengths in the first two furlongs.

Clarendon passed Point Duty to lead into the last half mile, but the favourite made another dogged run into a short lead only to be caught, first by Fremont and then by Laramie.

Like Fremont and Laramie, Point Duty has been entered for the New Zealand Cup, and he has been given 8-8, the weight he carried on Saturday. Tardini, always in the first half dozen, ran the race out doggedly for fourth ahead of Automaton and the Gore horse, Summer Magic, which looked in need of further slimming. The other South Island runner, Time and Tide, was virtually pacemaker for a time: when Point Duty went away to his wide lead early, and he petered out from the three furlongs, finishing twelfth.