FROM STUD AND STABLE Flying filly here to clean up at Riccarton

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33987, 30 October 1975, Page 8

FROM STUD AND STABLE Flying filly here to clean up at Riccarton

(By

J. J. BOYLE)

She bears the unglamorous name of Mop, hut she is all elegance and class, with the relaxed air of a superb athlete which, indeed, she is. Mr Tom Lowry’s flier is already settled in at Riccarton and will be one of the great attractions of the New Zealand Cup carnival when she goes after the New Zealand One Thousand Guineas on November 15. Mop comes to Riccarton with a record of seven wins from eight starts, and her Hastings trainer, the vastlyexperienced Keith Couper. is still left to wonder how fast she really is. Couper has been training for 40 years, won a Royal Auckland Cup with Coaltown, another "Royal” at Riccarton with Moy, and many races with Demonic. But he knew that Mop was something else again the day she gave the Te Awamutu speedster March Legend a good start in the Wanganui Celebrity Stakes last December, beat him by five lengths and a half, and made it look like so much pace work. Then a setback, one that could have easily ended the career of the Taipan filly. “I thought there was! something wrong with her) when she could win the !

Great Northern Foal Stakes by only two lengths,” Couper said yesterday. "Someone suggested she was shin sore. But she had been changing her stride in the straight, and I feared something worse.”

• Couper was right. An X-ray of Mop’s off foreleg revealed a crack in the cannon bone. Any delay in investigating I the source of the trouble could have easily resulted in ! enough wear and tear on the weak spot to force Mop right

out of racing. And that would have been much to racing’s cost, especially this spring when she has done much to compensate for the loss of older “name” horses like Fury’s Order to the spring carnival in Melbourne. The New Zealand One Thousand Guineas will be Mop’s fifth race for the season, and her record carries the message of steady improvement with each run, the latest to produce a slashing victory in the Desert Gold Stakes last Saturday.

This victory gave Mr Lowry special pleasure; the race perpetuates the name of the great mare which was the Queen of the New Zealand Turf in her time, winning 19 races “straight.”

Desert Gold was owned by Mr T. H. Lowry, father of Mop’s owner, and this famous mare was brought to Riccarton for some of her more famous triumphs which included the New Zealand Derby-Oaks double in 1915 and the C.J.C. Challenge Stakes in 1917.

Those races have departed from the scene at Riccarton, but the New Zealand One Thousand Guineas is one worthy substitute, and Mr Lowry could not have a more brilliant colour-bearer than Mop to improve his family’s winning record on the course.