Surround likely to remain in Australia

Press, 26 May 1977, Page 26

Surround likely to remain in Australia

From the Australian racing; correspondent of "The Press’’ Sydney One thing now seems certain; Surround, the amazing filly by Sovereign Edition, will be kept for racing in Australia. ; The uncertainty now is whether she will run in the Brisbane Cup, although the stable’s decision is that she will run if she continues to hold her racing condition as well as she has in the warm Brisbane weather. On Saturday there was no question of her superiority among the three-year-olds in the Grand Prix in Brisbane, the last of the rich three-year-old races. She toyed with her opponents and in the concluding stages her rider dropped his hands and let her slow down without any fear of defeat. Queensland’s outsider Miner’s Inn was second and Ming Dynasty third, but theirs was a hopeless chase down the long Eagle Farm straight. Surround now has won $340,980 and success in the Brisbane Cup wrnuld get the total close to the $400,000 mark. She will, of course, increase her earnings when she contests the Queensland Derby next Saturday, and a: Brisbane Cup start will. depend on how she comes! through her run in the classic. In the spring she will have the rich W. S. Cox Plate and possibly the Caulfield Cup as her main missions. It seems almost certain that she will reach the half million dollar mark if she continues sound for racing.

: Who would have thought a few years ago that a horse : could win that much money in Australia? But then who would have thought that a training stable could turn out winners of SIM in a season, yet it happens regularly in the Smith and Cummings training empires. It may not be long, either, before the aggregate for the wins and placings Surround has achieved will be SIM — probably in the lifetime of a majority who go racing these days. New forms of totalisator betting and the new electronic equipment for dealing with it are revolutionising tote betting in New South Wales and must spread to other states. Soon the punter will be able to bet on any meeting in any way he likes and collect from any form of betting at the one window. The latest craze — trifectas requiring the backer to correctly name the placed horses — is accounting for tremendous pools, and, all told, clubs will get well over SIM extra from the T.A.B. distribution next September.