FROM STUD AND STABLE Cup weights show weakness of Northern stayers

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33093, 7 December 1972, Page 8

FROM STUD AND STABLE Cup weights show weakness of Northern stayers

Where have all our stayers gone? That question must be exercising many thoughtful Auckland and Waikato racing students, especially since the appearance of Auckland Cup weights earlier this week.

On January 1 the Auckland Racing Club will stage New Zealand’s richest race—it is worth $45,000 — with every prospect of the race being dominated by stayers from distant places. Waikato has supplied the top-weight, Bardall with 9.2, but there can be no great surge of confidence in the chestnut’s ability to succeed this season in a race in which he failed with 8.6 three seasons ago. Nine of the next 10 places in the Auckland Cup weights are filled by horses from either North Island central districts or the South Island. Beatnik, from Bulls, is closest to Bardall with 8.13. Then come Glengowan, from Woodville, with 8.9, and Taranaki’s Tomray (8.8), Fort Hagan (8.6), and Kartika (81). Wingatui’s Golden Sam will go into the Auckland Cup field with 8.3, 21b less than he carried into second behind Kartika in the New Zealand Cup last month. Third for south? Golden Sam holds excellent prospects of giving the South Island its third successive win in the race. His predecessors were Artifice and Sailing Home. A win for Golden Sam would also extend a family link with the race. Artifice was prepared for her victory by J. Didham, a younger brother of Golden Sam’s trainer and part-owner, Arthur, and was ridden by E. J„ another member of a gifted family of horsemen.

Golden Sam will be a newcomer in the north but the decision to tilt at the honours in the richest race ever staged in New Zealand reflects quiet confidence of his ability to meet the demands I of the Ellerslie two-miler just as capably as any of the “foreigners” which have had

rich pickings there in the last few months. Sailing Home’s Auckland Cup victory last January was anything but an isolated success at the expense of the best of the Auckland and Waikato horses. The comparative weakness of the northern horses was

never more clearly illustrated than in the Waikato Racing Club’s international race in February, when Sailing Home (Riccarton), Game (Hastings), Topsy (Otaki) filled the first three places, and were chased home by the Awapuni stablemates, Young Ida and Silver Knight. No change There was no change in the pattern in the northern glamour races later last autumn, thanks to Topsy (New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes), Sailing Home (Stars Travel Invitation Stakes), Kia Marea (Auckland Easter Handicap and Champion Stakes), and Young Ida (Great Northern Oaks). Nor has the turn of the season brought any change in the situation. The $25,000 Avondale Cup, on November 11, produced a race in which the best from the north looked like plodding hacks, with the finish dominated by Beatnik, Fort Hagen, and Glengowan. A fortnight later Fort Hagen was first and Glengowan third in the $lO,OOO Waikato Cup. They were split by Dyak, and this placing appeared to truly reflect the position that they are no easier to win in the north than they are at Riccarton. Dyak, at his previous start, had had to settle for third in the Metropolitan at Riccarton.