Uncle Remus may need run

Press, 19 August 1978, Page 20

Uncle Remus may need run

Special Correspondent Auckland Those who know Uncle Remus best will not be expecting too much from him when he starts on his comeback, in the weight-for-age Foxbridge Plate at Te Rapa today. The trainer, Colin Jillings, said frankly on Thursday, after Uncle Remus galloped, that he believed the horse was not yet ready to win in spite of the work he had put into him these last few weeks.

Certainly Jillings could not have given Uncle Remus more in the way of both pacework and galloping. The trouble, he said, had been to find suitable companions for the horse. There were few capable of making Uncle Remus exert himself sufficiently for him to derive the utmost benefit from

his training: the horse simply needed racing. For all that, Uncle Remus might well start as favourite in the Foxbridge Plate. He gathered last season an army of admirers, most of them unlikely to be convinced that he might not iwin, whatever the length of ;his layoff or consequences lof the operation he had last autumn for respiratory trouble. His 13 wins from 14 attempts and 10 in a row last season were achieved with a bold style of racing that captivated everyone.

Whatever Uncle Remus does today is certain to be widely reported. New Zealand interest in him is keenenough and his being in the Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup has brought reporters from Sydney and Melbourne to see him race. If Uncle Remus has trouble getting the 1400 m — he is such a galloper that he

can be expected to be very prominent for quite a way, however unready he might be — Happy Union or My Binnie will probably win. Happy Union and My Binnie have both won at weight-for-age, My Binnie as recently as last May, in a 1600 m event at Trentham. Happy Union gained his one and only weight-for-age success when an autumn three-year-old. But he took the 1977 Avondale Cup, toward the end of last year, and after a spell he seems close to regaining that high peak of form. Last time he finished fourth and failed only narrowly to win in the 2000 m Taumarunui Cup. The course being shorter should not lessen his chance in the Foxbridge Plate, because he has plenty of early speed. My Binnie tried a middle distance too, last time, and finished third, at Trentham over 2200 m. The weight-for-

age race she won In May! was the Captain Cook Stakes over 1600 m, easily by] four lengths and a half from I Luck Roona. The Waikato Racing Club] took 24 acceptors for the' Foxbridge Plate — six balloted out with right of reentry — so a field of 18, the limit for the 1400 m start, is practically 7 certain. For an event of this stature the number might well I have been kept less. The selecting of a dozen runners with three or four emergencies should not have] been difficult: so many are! right out of form. - • j Stipulwin. Korbel and] Kauere Lad look the best prospects for the main middle-distance event ' and second leg of the T.A.B. double, the P. G. Vercoe Handicap. All manage very soft ground well and Korbel, with an easy last-start win at Pukekohe, is in particularly good form.