Wolfenden tops 1000

Press, 28 November 1977, Page 18

Wolfenden tops 1000

PA Auckland Peter Wolfenden became only the second New Zealand trotting driver to score 1000 wins — the other was the legendary Maurice Holmes — when he took the Otumoetai Pace at Tauranga on Saturday with Del’s Boy. It had appeared to many he had achieved the feat in a race earlier in the day with a horse which dead-heated for first. But the New Zealand Trotting Conference recognises a deadheat as only half a point, so Wolfenden’s score went to 999.5 — and countless well-wishers had to congratulate him twice.

It took Holmes 36 years to reach a four-figure tally of wins, Wolfenden has beon driving for 24 years.

Wolfenden recalled last night that in the early days he was beginning to wonder whether he would make the grade. “In the first five years I bad a total of 20 winners, and in the last of those years I had one lone winner.” Since then, the winners have rolled in at such a great rate that he has eight times won the national premiei-ship, and three years ago he did something the great Holmes was unable to achieve — he drove 100 winners in a season.

Holmes piloted 1666 winners in a career spanning just on 50 years.

Wolfenden, who is 42, needs only to keep up his present rate to go past that figure well before he reaches the compulsory retiring age of 65. It has been a memorable season for Wolfenden. Earlier this month, he won the New Zealand Derby Stakes at Addington for the first time, and this followed victory in the New Zealand Cup with the Clevedontrained Sole Command. He has won the New Zealand Cup four times, the Auckland Cup three times and every other race of note on the New Zealand trotting calendar. With only a third of the season gone, Wolfenden looks sure to beat his premiership-winning total last term of 77. His score stands at 37.5, the nearest to him on the table is on 18.