Great Northern on Trell’s programme

Press, 22 May 1978, Page 18

Great Northern on Trell’s programme

By

J. J. BOYLE

The Southland-owned, Washdyke-trained Trell will probably tilt at Great Northern Steeplechase honours next month.

A start for the five-year-old in New Zealand's richest and most gruelling crosscountry race was under earnest discussion after his

decisive win in the Hororata ' Racing Club’s Jim Beam Steeplechase at Riccarton on Saturday. Trell is owned in Eastern Southland by Messrs Jim. and John Ford and trained } at Washdyke by Pat Corboy. Corboy has been a famil ! iar figure on major North Island courses with the famous Grey Way, but he has never put a runner in to a Great Northern Steeplechase and he believes Trell is promising material for such a test “There are no frills about} him and he does not have a!< sharp turn of speed, but he will stay all day,” Corboy said on Saturday. Trell missed a fortnight’s}' work in his preparation fori the Great Northern when he bruised a foot, and he had . only about half a race in the Canterbury Jockey Club’s 1 Haast Steeplechase last Wednesday, losing his rider* after slipping into a fence.: 1 But Corbov had him on then track at Washdyke the fol-11 lowing morning to do repeti-11 tion sprints, and confidence 1 !

in his fitness mounted when the Summer Magic gelding beat a stable mate in one of them. Trell has now won three

races over country from the I Corboy stable, and has } proved a bargain for his i Eastern Southland owners who bought him for $lOOO ■ out of the birdcage after the Birchwood Hunt races at Invercargill in the autumn of j last year. The first of those wins was at Washdyke the second the Christchurch Hunt’s Homeby Steeplechase at the tail end of last season. Trell’s sire Summer Magic, a son of the great Summertime was a good winner from the Winsloe stable at Gore. Trell’s dam, Windsor Park, has stout staying influences in her pedigree through Underwood and Royal Chief. Windsor Park's grandam Spearette is also the second} dam of the successful Tem-perton-trained hurdler Bleu I Streak. Paul Dooney, Who has} partnered Trell in his two' * wins over the Riccarton course, has found that the } five-vear-old jumps most isurefy with a minimum of 'direction from the rider.

i “He fiddles about at some lof his fences, but is usually :safe enough,” Dooney said on Saturday. “He’s onepaced, but shapes as if will stay any distance.” In Saturday’s race Trell carried 63kg, and won going away by four and a half lengths from the favourite Cheeky Fella, which had 66.5.

It was a two-horse race in the last 800 metres. Young Command dropped out of contention into a gap of 16 lengths behind Cheeky Fella, yet 15 lengths clear of the top weight Super Guy. Aqua tumbled at the second last fence, and his stablemate Reporter lost his rider at the last when beaten off. Aqua was remounted by Ellis Winsloe to complete the course.

Earlier in the day Stan McKay’s Wingatui stable had better fortune with William Grey in the Bangor Brush Hurdles.

I Carrying the colours of I his veteran trainer, William Grey outfinished Sudden 'Change, which had been taken to the front before the home turn, but found the task of conceeding 5.5 kg a little more than he could manage.