FROM STUD AND STABLE Sydney writer learned lesson the hard way

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32773, 25 November 1971, Page 8

FROM STUD AND STABLE Sydney writer learned lesson the hard way

New Zealand has an ardent and eloquent advocate of its thoroughbreds in the Sydney racing writer, Pat Farrell.

Farrell has been engaged this week in a war of words with the editor of an Australian thoroughbred magazine which this year turned down advertising of the New Zealand yearling sales. This magazine, which aims to promote the claims of the Australian thoroughbred, has at times been quick to point to any dull patches in the records of New Zealand horses at the major Australian carnivals. At times it has been less than generous-in evaluating the merits of the invaders’ records. There have also been times when important victories by New Zea-land-breds have been completely overlooked. And Farrell has been quick to seize

.on the many errors and omissions. ’ ! The New Zealand, thoroughbred took on greater; stature in Farrell’s eyes six years ago. Farrell still remembers the .time with some embarrassment. Two days before the 1965 Melbourne Cup he wrote in his Sydney “Sunday Mirror" I column: “Light Fingers looked sour and sore after Saturday’s Mackinnon Stakes. She is in no mood for racing at the moment and should not carry your money or mine in any race.” About 100 yards from the post in the Melbourne Cup as Light Fingers was getting the better of her stablemate, Ziema, Farrell was thinking of Omar Khayyam .and his warning that the moving fingers writes, and having writ moves on. “Not all your piety nor wit can lure it

back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out one word of it.” Some five minutes later Farrell was starting to believe that his newspaper enjoyed favourable sales in Melbourne. He also found that the Melbourne jockey, Roy Higgins, who had won on the gallant little Waikato-bred Le Filou mare was one of those readers. Champion Higgins explained: “Light Fingers just happens to be a champion in every sense and champions can break all the rules and get away with it. “Lameness and a virus attack tore big gaps out of her preparation and you could hardly be blamed for thinking she had no hope. But I love her so much that my wife gets jealous and all I’ve

wanted to do this spring is ride Light Fingers in the Melbourne Cup.

“Even when she was too lame or sick for heavy work and Bart Cummings, her trainer, was in Adelaide, I arranged for her to be walked four or five miles a day to keep her muscles up. I wouldn’t take another Cup ride while there was a hope of her getting to the post, for I knew she was champion enough to win despite her set-backs,” Higgins said. In his column the next day Farrell apologised to everyone he might have put on the wrong track in their search for the Cup winner. “If it’s any consolation,” he wrote, “there is now a dark patch on the wall of my hotel room where the crumbling plaster mixes with hair oil and strands of hair I can ill afford to lose. It’s the spot where I kept banging my head last night. Since then Farrell has become a regular visitor to Trentham for the sales to see fellow Australians buy on a record scale in their search for Cup material. The fact that Silver Knight and Igloo were running for New Zealand owners and from New Zealand stables when they filled the first two places in this year’s Cup has only emphasised the lesson that the sale catalogue still contains rich material at comparatively bargain prices, more within the price range of the average New Zealander.