Crisp keeps interest up

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 8

Crisp keeps interest up

(N.Z. Press Assn,—CopyrifiUW LONDON. The performances of the Melbourne steeplechaser, Crisp, have kept interest in Australian racing at an unusually high level during the English national hunt season.

Normally, the Australian challenge for English and Continental training and riding honours is concentrated exclusively on the flat season.

However, Crisp, Sir Ches-

ter Manfold’s giant-striding champion, which has been dubbed the "big black kangaroo" by Fleet Street’s racing writers, has won the affection of English punters and beaten the best steeple chasers in England this winter. Yet Crisp, which has won six of his eight English starts in the last two seasons and has been unplaced only once, is still on the threshold of his greatest win. After a brilliant win at Kempton a fortnight ago, he was installed joint-favourite for the Cheltenham Gold Cup — the blue riband event of English steepiechasing — to be run at the Cotswold course on March 16. The next week, the flatracing season will start with a mixed meeting at Doncaster — a week after the flatracing season gets underway in Ireland. Australian trainers and jockeys, who have become an integral part of the European racing scene since the early 19605, will again be vying with some of the world’s most capable horsemen for rich honours. Sydney’s G. Moore has taken up his appointment as private trainer to the American oil multi-millionaire, Mr Nelson Bunker Hunt, and has

become the third Australian training in Europe. He joins J. Fellows in

Chantilly, the French racing headquarters, while the great Scobie Breasley starts his fourth season as a trainer at Epsom, England. R. Hutchinson, R. Maddocks, and W. Williamson will continue to ride in England — Williamson returning after a season in Paris, where he was retained by the Aga Khan.

In Ireland, traditionally a fine hunting ground for Australian jockeys, L. Johnson and A. Simpson will again ride for leading trainers. This season, they have been joined by H. Cope, who

had a short stint in France and Ireland last year, and the young New Zealand rider, R. B. Marsh, who won last year’s Melbourne Cup on Silver Knight. Marsh is the only new name from Australia or New Zealand in European racing this season.