Sly Wink coasts to win

Press, 18 October 1976, Page 20

Sly Wink coasts to win

The Levin-trained Sly Wink brought the first Wellesley Stakes victory in 14 years to a South Island owner at Trentham on Saturday.

Sly Wink carried the colours of her Kurow breeder, Mr J. D. Mcllraith, to victory by three garts of a length from Hagen’s oy, which was slightly flattered by the winner’s margin. The previous South Islandowned winner was Rondabelle (1962), whose breeder-owner later won a Melbourne Cup with Baghdad Note.

Sly Wink is now unbeaten in three starts from the stable of Errol Skelton, and it will be a surprise if she does not improve that sequence when she contests the Welcome Stakes at Riccarton on November 6.

“X don’t think I have ever had one faster in my stable.” Errol Skelton said after his brother Bill won the stakes on

the Wandering Eyes filly on Saturday.

Bill Skelton told his trainerbrother that Sly Wink felt as if she was going only three-quarter pace early, leaving her with a mind to prop and gawk about her. Sly Wink's dam, Smashing, is by Stunning from Madam Don, and is a fifth generation descendant of Black Cat, which left Magical, winner of the Wellesley Stakes from the Riccarton stable of the late Fred Jones in 1947. Halfaya’s win in the Watkins Handicap, first leg of the T.A.B. double on Saturday, revived memories of another brilliant Riccarton - trained two-year-old. Halfaya. a four-year-old grey gelding by Sugar Apple, descends from Pastel, a Pherozshah filly with blazing speed which she turned to good account in a record-equalling 57 4-5 in winning the C.J.C. Welcome Stakes for

the stable of the late J. S. Shaw in 1949.

Trained at Foxton by the veteran Harold Webby. Halfaya is owned by Mr Jim Shine, a retired Te Aroha publican, and Mrs Shine.

The four-year-old is to be entered for the New Zealand Cup, a race also likely to be on the programmes of Entice and Trochee, the next best behind Halfaya on Saturday. The Auckland Cup is to be the main summer mission for Master Morgan Handicap in the hands of Wainui Handicap in the hands of Bill Skelton on Saturday

Master Morgan also won the Wainui Handicap in 1973, and was third in the 1975 Auckland Cup. He has had a history of unsoundness in the meantime, but the seven-year-old’s Gisborne owner-trainer Mr A. R. Rogers, whose travelling head "lad’' is the former trainer Alf Macdonald, hopes all is plain sailing between now and January 1 when his colour-bearer goes after the big one at Ellerslie.