Special qualifying conditions urged

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33003, 24 August 1972, Page 8

Special qualifying conditions urged

“The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND. The North Island branch of the New Zealand Trotting Horsemen and Trainers’, Association will not lack support if its bid to have the regulations for qualifying trials amended so as to give three-year-olds a better chance of making the grade early In the. season. The Association has recommended to its parent body that the Trotting Conference be asked to consider loosening the time limit for three-year-olds in the first three months of the season from 3:21 to 3:24. In its letter to the N.Z.H.TA. the association says that trainers are again faced with the task of trying to qualify immature horses on slow tracks. “These horses, in most cases, are not yet three years old and the effort asked of them is almost invariably too tough, even for horses of considerable ability. “Some idea of the magnitude of the task can be gained from a recent Cambridge matinee at which 2.18 class horses took approximately 3:24 for the last mile and a half of a 13 furlongs event.

A cup class horse did no better than 3:17.” It is felt that owners of three-year-olds deserve a more reasonable chance to qualify their horses for, and race them in, rich three-year-old races being staged by clubs such as Wellington. The association maintains that a three-year-old would need to be quite exceptional to qualify at this time of the year, and that this gives an unfair advantage to horses which qualified in two-year-old races. The same proposal was put to the conference last year. In declining to amend the regulations the conference ruled it was a “purely local problem.”