RACING Chance for Show Gate to join famous list

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33519, 27 April 1974, Page 8

RACING Chance for Show Gate to join famous list

Show Gate will join a list of famous names if she wins the thirty-first running of the J. I). Ormond Memorial (iold Cup for her Otago owner-breeder-trainer. Mr G. B. Thomson, at I lastings today.

The race was first run in 1920, and although it disappeared from the calendar from 1930 until 1955 its list of winners is studded with famous names.

Gloaming won two Ormond Cups, in 1922 and 1925. The 1921 winner was Sasanof. the first to win both the Melbourne Cup and the New Zealand Cup. When it made its welcome reappearance on the calendar in 1955 the Ormond Memorial Gold Cup was run at a mile and a quarter instead of a mile, and was won by Redcraze, a horse of the highest class. Picaroon had his first of three victories in the race in 1960. and his feat has since been equalled by Mr and Mrs T. C. Lowry’s Game, one of racing's great crowd-• pleasers. I The South Island has sent

few horses north in the race’s modem era but today Show Gate will be going after a double won for Otago by Palisade eight years ag->.

Palisade carried off both the Awapuni Gold Cup and the Ormond for Mr A. T Ottrey and for the stable of the late D. P. Wilson in the autumn of 1966. Show Gate is this season’s Awapuni Gold Cup winner and if she triumphs today she will, or should, have convinced the few remaining doubting Thomases in the north of the South Islands; ability to come up with performers of class. Show Gate embarked on her first North Island campaign only in January. Now her North Island record is three firsts, one second, one fourth and an unlucky sixth in as manv starts, for $19,287.50, including a $450 cup. By contrast her career record of 14 firsts, two seconds, and two fourths on South Island courses has brought |in slightly 1e55—519,239.50. A win today for Show Gate would carry her earn-j ings past $30,000 for the present season, and beyond $40,000 for a career which started with a win worth $350 at Oamaru on August 21. 1972. Her most rewarding victory this season was at her first North Island appearance, in the Wellington Racing Club’s Telegraph Handicap in January. This was worth $6500. WTien she was taken back to Trentham in March she won the weight-for-age North Island Challenge Stakes and ran a close second

to the top three-year-old Fury’s Order in the Port Nicholson Stakes. Those runs yielded $6400. The 53250 for first in the Stewards Hep. at Riccarton last November has been Show Gate’s best single return in a South Island race this season.

At the other end of the scale was the $BlO for winning the Banks Peninsula club’s Le Bons Handicap in her lead-up race to the Stewards. Even her win at Kurow at New Year was more valuable —by $4O.