RACING Further Set-back For Jockey

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31922, 25 February 1969, Page 4

RACING Further Set-back For Jockey

Lots of luck—but most of it bad—could summarise the present racing season for the Riccarton jockey, A. J. Stokes.

In a race fall at the Geraldine meeting on October 19, Stokes received a dislocated hip and a crushed elbow.

Stokes was making slow but steady progress but he was back “behind scratch” again after a fall at his home last I week. He was doing some I house painting when the ladder toppled, and in the fall ‘the arm injured in the race ; fall was broken in two places. The breaks are in the upper arm, and an X-ray shows that they are clean, but they will delay Stokes's return to race riding for some time. C. C. McCarthy, another widely-known racing figure in New Zealand and Australian racing circles, is also out of action, with a heart condition.

McCarthy, who selected Dalray as a yearling, and prepared him to win the 1952 Melbourne Cup and several other races, was striken about a fortnight ago and was admitted to hospital where his condition is showing slow improvement. Another of Riccarton’s veteran trainers, J. S. Shaw, was in hospital with a heart condition earlier this year but has now resumed the supervision of members of his team. Spelling Native Diver, which raced below his best in the Even Stevens Cup at the Waikato meeting, was later X-rayed and was found to be suffering from strained ligaments in his off fore-leg. Native Diver will go out to spell and is unlikely to race again this season. • Earlier his trainer, W. W. Townsend, had been considering returning to Trentham for the main staying races) at the Wellington autumn meeting. Retinue fractured a sesamoid bone when galloping on the plough at Riccarton on Saturday and was destroyed.

Mr J. Y. Scales’s six-year-old was well advanced in preparation for another campaign, which was to have started at the Oamaru autumn meeting. Retinue won four races and £9BO from B. F. Deacon’s Hawera stable as a three-year-old, but never recaptured that form after Mr Scales bought him and placed him with R. P. Register at Riccarton.

Lady Glory showed convincing mastery of a middle distance in winning the Dunedin Jockey Club’s Farewell Handicap at Wingatui on Saturday.

Her time for the 11 furlongs was 2 min 17 l/ssec, which was four-fifths of a second faster than Middy’s time in winning the openclass Wingatui Handicap earlier in the afternoon. Lady Glory made her run from the middle of the field and was not really challenged in winning by a length and a quarter. Lady Glory has been nominated for staying hack races at the Wellington Racing Club’s autumn meeting, and her connections must have found her late form of a high enough standard to warrant a Trentham campaign.

Lady Glory has breeding to recommend her for a career as a stayer. She is a four-year-old by Jekyll from Dame Glory, which like Melbourne, the dam of the Wellington Cup winner, City Court, was sired by Underwood. Lady Glory is a sixth generation descendant of Stepfeldt, a Great Northern Derby winner, a famous producer and a sister of Stepniak, which had great success as a sire after a successful racing career.

Stepfeldt achieved fame as a producer through the deeds of Reputation, Elevation, Gravitation, Provocation, and Tribulation. Balboa beat Reputation in the New Zealand Derby in 1914 but Reputation easily turned the tables in the Canterbury Cup and the Great Northern Derby. In that season Reputation also won the Wanganui and Hawke’s Bay Guineas, the W.R.C. Champion Plate, and the G. G. Stead Memorial Gold Cup, and ran second to Warstep in the Auckland Cup. Later he was taken to Australia where he won the A.J.C. Spring Stakes and Autumn Stakes.

As a two-year-old Elevation won the C.J.C. Challenge Stakes and the Hawke’s Bay Stakes and in his second season he won the New Zealand Derby, Canterbury Cup, Feilding Stakes, and Palmerston North Stakes.

Gravitation, Provocation, and Tribulation were brothers, and all contributed to the grand record of their family.

Gravitation won the Hastings and Wanganui Jackson Stakes; Provocation the C.J.C. Champagne Stakes, W.R.C. Wellesley and North Island Challenge Stakes, and the

Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu and Jackson Stakes; and Tribulation the Hawke’s Bay Guineas. Later this family produced Rapier, which won the Wellington, New Zealand, and Auckland Cups in 1927; Happy Ending, which won both the New Zealand and Wellington Cups; and Lord Chancellor, whose wins included the Auckland Cup and the Great Northern St Leger. A New Zealand St Leger winner from this family was Foxbay, and Voltaic was one of its morst versatile members about 20 years ago.