FROM STUD AND STABLE Characteristic Coolness After Galilee Victory.

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 4

FROM STUD AND STABLE Characteristic Coolness After Galilee Victory.

Cool and dry best sums up the personality of the brilliant Adelaide trainer, J. B. Cummings, whose efforts to win a second Melbourne Cup with Galilee will engage much attention in Australia and New Zealand in the next few weeks.

In one of his more loquacious and exuberant moments Cummings once described Galilee to “The Press” as “a good stayer —a real stayer.”

His comment after Galilee resumed his great winning record with a brilliant run in the Memsie Stakes last Saturday was quite in character.

"A good run, yes, a good run," he said. “I wish all my horses were training as well as Galilee.”

Characteristically the Cummings comments were in a minor key compared with those of j. Miller, Galilee’s regular jockey. “It was a real run from the champion racehorse that he is,” Miller said. Galilee’s win last Saturday was the seventeenth of his career, and the brilliant New Zealand-bred has now earned $165,190. Cameras Barred So thorough was Cumming’s approach to the race last Saturday that television cameras were barred—even from the stable yard—so that nothing would upset Galilee. Writing in the “Austra-

lian,” Peter Lovitt said it was one of the easiest and most immaculate wins he had seen from Galilee. He added: “The weight-for-age events from now on seem only a mere formality.” Galilee's next race may be the Craiglee Stakes at Flemington on Saturday. Cummings also plans to start the Caulfield Cup favourite, the New Zealandbred Lowland, in the Craiglee Stakes.

Busy Programme The Auckland jockey, R. J. Skelton, must rate high on the National Airways Corporation’s list of much travelled patrons. He flew to the South Island to ride at the Ashburton meeting on Tuesday, returned to the North Island that evenling, and was riding successfully at Gisborne yesterday. Next Monday week he will be back in the South Island to ride at the Geraldine meeting at Orari. He has been engaged to ride Early Dawn in the Geraldine Cup, run on a course he knows so well. Like his elder brother, Bill,

Bob Skelton served his apprenticeship with L. H. Pratt at Orari. The W. D. Skelton mount in the Geraldine Cup will be His Lordship, a fast-finishing third behind Time and Tide and Early Dawn in the Tinwald Handicap at Ashburton. Brilliant Veteran Baloo has gone into enforced retirement—he injured a leg in the Heathcote Handicap at Riccarton—as one of a number of remarkable veterans produced in New Zealand in the last 20 years.

I He was not a weight-car-rier like Great Sensation or ! Palisade, but he was almost unbeatable on his day at a mile and a quarter or thereabouts when he had about 8-4. Notable amongst his 19 wins were two Canterbury Cups, a Manawatu Cup, a C.J.C. Riccarton Handicap in New Zealand record time for nine furlongs, and a Feilding Cup in record time for a mile and a quarter. He earned $46,615 for his breeder, Mrs P. J. Borthwick,

in a career that extended into its tenth season.

Welcome Move The Hororata Racing Club has established a place of prestige for itself amongst New Zealand's “one-day clubs” with its move to increase stakes by $1230 to $BBOO for its race meeting at Riccarton in December. The fact that the Hororata success story has been linked with its decision to move to Riccarton a few years ago cannot have escaped the attention of racing officials. There Is an obvious lesson for more intensified regionalisation, but in that respect New Zealand has many unwilling pupils. The readiness of the Hororata club to return profits to racing by way of stakes is also an object lesson to the Christchurch Hunt Club. Like Hororata, the Christchurch Hunt Club races at Riccarton, and coming a week before the Grand National Steeplechase it has one of the prize racing dates of the year. Yet the hunt club distributes $2lOO less in stakes over nine races than Hororata will this year in an eightrace programme.

Combined on and off-course turnovers do not bear any relation to the stakes distributed.

The Hororata combined turnover last year was $164,326, little more than half of the hunt club’s figure of $312,169. Good Record In relation to turnover the Waimate Racing Club’s record is also good. In 1967 Waimate’s oncourse turnover was only $32,180, and its off-course figure was $97,339, yet it distributed almost $6OOO at its meeting last May. Its $lBOO Cup compares more than favourably with the value of races at several meetings with much bigger turnovers.