Cedar Key under offer for six-figure sum

Press, 8 March 1982, Page 25

Cedar Key under offer for six-figure sum

By

W. R. CARSTON

Negotiations are under way for the sale of Cedar Key. this was revealed on Saturday by the three-year-old’s part-owner and trainer, Brydon Mills, after the talented Riccarton sprinter's narrow but impressive victory in the Hororata Racing Club’s Amalgamated Packaging Handicap at Riccarton. Although Mills, who races Cedar Key in partnership with his wife, Lynda, would not reveal the price he had put on the horse he was prepared to say that the interested purchaser was an American, living in San Francisco, and if the deal was finalised it would be for a substantial six-figure sum. In winning Saturday’s sprint, his third victory on the trot and his fifth from his last six starts, Cedar Key earned himself a trip to Trentham for a tilt at Valley Handicap honours on the second day of the Wellington Racing Club’s autumn meeting on Wednesday.

Although Cedar Key came out best by only a neck, after leading for the best part of the last 850 m in his first test in the open grade, it was a margin which was inclined to flatter the runner-up, Darnley Flight, a dogged finisher from far back in the field.

Cedar Key’s winning margin would have almost certainly been wider if his regular young rider, Raewyn Starr, had not looked over her shoulder three times to see where the opposition was in the last 400 m. Each time that occurred her mount seemed to get the impression it was all Oder and began to “loaf.” In the final pinch she had to resort to the whip to keep his mind on the job. Although the actions of the stable apprentice did not meet with the approval of Cedar Key’s small army of supporters'' Mills took the blame. "I told her before the race to watch out for horses likely to sneak through on the inner once she passed the false rail. She was only carrying out those instructions,” he said. The Amalgamated Packaging Handicap was the second leg of the T.A.B. double. The first leg, the Hororata Gold Cup, resulted in a decisive victory for the locally-trained Just a Rebel. Just a Rebel, very well rated in front by Ron McCann, led through the last 1600 m to win the Hororata Racing Club’s feature event unchallenged. He coasted to the finish with a break of three lengths on Five Over Five, which was followed in , at half-length intervals bv

Paddy Beaufort and the favourite, Firefly. This victory was Just a Rebel’s second on his home course this time round and his fifth altogether in the colours of Mr David Clarkson and his Riccarton trainer, Dave Kerr. Just a Rebel’s record is one which surely must have been better but for a setback which forced him out of racing for almost 12 months. His connections obviously held him in high regard right from the start for they turned down an offer of $70,0Q0 for him as a three-year-old. David Clarkson, one of racing’s best-known personalities, will now have two Hororata Cups to display in his home. He said at’ Saturday’s presentation that this year’s cup would look good standing beside the cup he inherited from his father whose horse, Comment, won the 1921 Hororata Cup. Dave Kerr said after Saturday’s race that he had no immediate plans for the Weyand four-year-old. He will be prepared now for the major races for stayers at the C.J.C. Easter carnival and, perhaps, will have a race or two leading up to that fixture. Riccarton horses almost made a clean sweep of the

major prizes on Saturday. Wyella. a member of Cliff Reese-Jones’s stable at Wingatui, proved far too strong for the highweighters in the Bangor Handicap but local trainers saddled the winners of the other nine races on the programme.

In the supporting races Tom Lalor was the most successful. He saddled Kelly Robe to win the H.A. Knight Memorial and Asterisk to win the Nellavale Plate No. 2.

Auchentoshan made short work of her two-year-old rivals for Bob Register and his wife in the Riccarton Stud Handicap, and the Nellavale Plate No. 1 went to Legalize, a member of Dick Jennings’s team.

The third maiden event on the programme, the Homebush Plate, saw King’s Robe, which carries the colours of Maureen McCarthy and is trained by her husband Clarrie, graduate, and Stead, prepared by “Ned” and Lloyd Thistoll gained a long overdue win in the L. Derrett Handicap. Double Jay rounded off a highly successful day for the locals when she beat Foam and 11 others convincingly in the Sandown Handicap in the colours of her trainer, Lester Woods and his sister June.