Busy week for young jockey

Press, 25 August 1979, Page 20

Busy week for young jockey

By

P. J. MEIN

Wayne Hillis, the young Takanini apprentice with a I nomadic yearning, will be , out to keep an unbeaten \ record intact this week i when he combines with the t Southland ’chaser Deep South at Gore today. ■I Hillis’s inter-island wan- | derings will have taken him 'from the deep south to I Auckland and beyond, run- ' j ning up a mileage in excess -|of 3000 km. I The youngest son of . i trainer Brian Hillis flew • 1 from Auckland to Oamaru, via Christchurch, to ride j Deep South to victory at • lOamaru last Monday. ,1 The next day he was ’' winging his way back to i ride his father’s horse, Otara "[Jack, at Taranaki on t [Wednesday.

Hillis must have thought he was travelling first-class as Otara Jack flew every obstacle and cleared out to a 100 m win.

Airborne yet again, the young horseman, aged 17, was back in Christchurch on Thursday and travelled by road to Gore yesterday to team up with Deep South.

Should the Rivertontrained grey succeed, Hillis will have rung up his third win, in both islands, in the space of a week. Mr and Mrs John Mcßae, of Nightcaps, surrendered $l2OO for Deep South at the dispersal sale of the Chelandry Stud in January, and the grey is trained by their son, Gareth, at Riverton.

> Deep South had a wind i operation early in his career, i but this has not stopped him winning at three of his last five attempts over country. ! His other two at starts ended in the Riccarton mud when he fell in both the iHomeby and Grand National I Steeples. Jumping ability is easily (explained when one looks at [the grey’s pedigree. An eight-year-old by Lomond, Deep South is from | the Kurdistan mare South I Col, a sister to the famed j Koral. Koral won 26 races for i the late Mr Bill Hazlett, in- ; eluding no less than seven lin the Homeby Steeplechase I and a Grand National I Steeples win.