Grey Way’s 41st win seems likely today

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 20

Grey Way’s 41st win seems likely today

By

J. J. BOYLE

The Canterbury Jockey Club will serve up appetising fare in four feature races at Riccarton todav.

The Churchill Stakes gives Grey Way a chance to win the forty-first race of his brilliant career. The seven-year-old Washci- ke grey's contemporaries Heidsieck. Royal Dell, Andre*. and Guest Star will put up stout opposition against their juniors in the New Zealand Cup. Youth will have its fling when the top three-year-old fillies meet in the $17,500 New Zealand One Thousand Guineas. And North Island stables will put talented -printers into the field for The Stewards, a race dominated last cear by Grey Way and the wonderful race mare. Show Gate. Andrew will not be breaking new ground if he wins the New Zealand Cup for ’he second successive vear today. Princess Mellay brought cff the double tn successive

years in 197;0 and 1971. and in her second triumph carried more weight (8.12) than the Hastings stayer has today. Bob Skelton, will bring al! his consderable skills to bear to land a "staggered" double in the race for Heidsieck. Mr and Mrs Gordon Pollock’s Hermes gelding won the New Zealand Cup twc years ago. but missed last year’s race, although he was brought south and landed his second Benson and Hedges Gold Cup. Heidsieck has 52 kg. which places him exactly at mid-point in the weights now that Wild Irish has dropped out. He has certainly not been 'rated ungenerously and, "The Press” believes, be is the most likely stumbling block if there is to be one in Roval Dell’s bid to win the race for South Canterbury. Heidsteck s deceased sire, Hermes, will also be repre-

disented by Pura Seta, which h was flow’ll into Christchurch !) from the Waikato on Thurss day. Pura Seta travelled well, I) and her owner, Mr Allan o Galbraith, hopes for a strong ” enough early pace to place a ir premium on stamina. Pura Seta will be ridden I- by Jim Walker, who won n the race on Kartika in 1972 o and again on Fury’s Order t two years later. s| Candyboy is a strong hope di for Otago to take up the d! formidable record of horses from that province in the i, i race. 1I Cup honours have gone s i north in the last three years, sjbut the Wingatui-trained Watallan won as a 10-year-n old in 1973, following I,' closely Princess Mellay’s s great double, and Middy’s ? win as a seven-vear-old in a 1969. e Candyboy’’s trainer-jockey, Jim Pankhurst, has not won :, a New Zealand Cup in his - long career as a race rider,

but he could have hardly wished for a better ride this year. Candyboy won the Benson and Hedges Gold Cup with style and ease, with a performance that matches his pre-race appearance. There will be no bet-ter-conditioned runner in today’s Cup field, leaving only one question, one Candyboy’s owner, Mr Cecil Wallis, raised yesterday: “He’s in a field where you have an unusually big number of horses with form at the distance while he’s an unknown quantity at the distance. How’s he going to rate with them?”

That question, with variations, reflects the openlooking nature of the field for the first of the major staying races of the season. The answer will be supplied before 2.15 this | afternoon for a big crowd I expected at Riccarton and for many thousands more who will see a live telecast [of the race.