Auckland campaign likely for. Magellan

Press, 16 November 1981, Page 28

Auckland campaign likely for. Magellan

By

J. J. BOYLE

Rich sprint races at Avondale and Ellerslie will probably be on the. four-year-old summer programme of Magellan, winner in style of the second leg of the Canterbury Jockey Club's T.A.B. double in his home track on Saturday. A four-year-old of the Adios II tribe purchased for $3750 at Trentham as a yearling, Magellan came charging home two lengths on top in Imin 09.045, a track record.

He was ridden by David Walsh, who partnered, Schweppeshire Lad when that English-bred ran second in The Stewards last year, and later went on to Avondale to win The Concorde, a race that will be on Magellan’s programme if the North Island campaign is continued.

Magellan is now winner of six races for the Riccarton stable of Mrs Helen Preston, and has not been worse than fourth in his other 11 starts for Messrs Noel and Murray Watson, of Christchurch. An important part of Magellan’s lead-up programme to Saturday’s race was a brief campaign in Southland. He was .beaten in one of his starts in' the south by The Dimple, whose half-sister The Twinkle, chased him home on Saturday. Turf Ruler, one of the outsiders of the field, just

saved third from the favourite, Silver Wraith, which ran out of racing room on the inside at a vital stage and finished at a great rate when Gary Phillips found a gap for him. Backers of the favourites had setbacks in the first three races on Saturday, the biggest of them coming with

the defeat of Powley in the Churchill Stakes.

Powley’s conqueror was King’s Royal, a five-year-old from the Levin stable of Ivil and Ansley which had won his maiden race only three days earlier. King’s Royal, a son of the Riccarton Stud sire, Double Speed, swooped along the rails and won by a length from Powley, which had been allowed to set a casual pace for the opening 800 m. Wingatui had better luck later in the Riccarton Handicap. Mr Ay Bee is eight, but he acted young in coming from the tail-end line for victory over the nine-year-old Kanga's Lad and 10 others.

Mr Ay Bee will now be prepared for the Dunedin and Invercargill Cups, and if his form is satisfactory Tony Prendergast will then aim him for the Wellington Cup.