Racing and trotting A predictable win: now the adventure

Press, 8 September 1976, Page 24

Racing and trotting A predictable win: now the adventure

Show Gate will be flown to Sydney tomorrow as winner of her last eight starts and with a lifetime record of 25 wins from 40 starts for her Mosgiel ownerbreeder, Mr Gordon Thomson.

She placed her twenty-fifth win on record in the Ashburton County Racing Club’s Gordons Handicap yesterday. Hardly anyone entertained second thoughts about the likely outcome of the race. And. as it turned out, a second thought would have been superfluous. It was not one of those processions, as many might have been ready to predict. But it was a performance right in character. She inched past Butch after a few gentle nudges up the straight, then started to loaf; leaving Butch flattered bv the winning margin of a head. “That's her all over,” said her rider, Chris Ramage, who and do the riding in Australia, will accompany Show Gate “She will do no more than

she has to and when she put a head on Butch she seemed to think that was enough.” “It was only a sprint. Show Gate pulled hard, but so did everything else as far as I could see and I was never afraid she would not be able to go to Butch when I asked her for something,” Ramage said later.

Ramage kept riding Show Gate with hands and heels to the post. Many would have welcomed a show of a little more vigour in such a situation. where Butch was fighting back with the utmost gameness on the inside, only inches behind. However, class had its inevitable bearing on the result and now Show Gate’s New Zealand countdown for the rich Epsom Handicap run, on October 2, is over. When betting on the race opened, Show Gate was showing $2.25 to win and $2 for a place. This clearly reflected the caution of T.A.B. punters, fearful of losing money on a successful place wager. She finally paid $1.70 and $1.45, carrying $8620 of a win pool of $17,958. The Ashburton club could

not have had a better attraction on a dull, cold day, and a good many patrons would not have been within 50 miles of the course if she had not been in action there. Mr Thomson, who will fly to Sydney today, will give his great mare one more race before the Epsom. He will choose between the Theo Marks Quality Handicap at Rosehill next week and the weight-for-age Hill Stakes, also run on that course later in the month.

Show Gate’s travelling companion tomorrow will be Boy From Dundee, a five-year-old gelding byShow Gate’s sire Gate Keeper from Glisk. He earned $225 towards the cost of the trip by running a close second in the Fairfield Handicap yesterday. If Boy From Dundee had won — and he appeared to be unlucky in having to settle for second, a nose from First Tuesday — Mr Thomson would have had a hattrick for the meeting. Rustic Gate won the Lagmhor Maiden Stakes No. 3 in the Thomson colours less than an hour after Show Gate’s victory.