Queen’s Pal logical Geraldine choice

Press, 15 October 1982, Page 12

Queen’s Pal logical Geraldine choice

By

J. J. BOYLE

Queen’s Pal will be the favourite and should meet that responsibility admirably in the Geraldine Challenge Stakes tomorrow.

This feature race for fillies is the second leg of the Geraldine Racing Club's T.A.B. double, and it opens the Wrightson Series for second-season females, a series that will be wound down with the Warstep Stakes at Riccarton next Easter. Queen’s Pal has splendid credentials for a set weight race against her contemporaries. Her three starts at two years yielded two wins and a second, and one of her victories was in the Canterbury Jockey Club’s Great Western Champagne Stakes.' Her second was behind Auchentoshan when she was making her race debut at Riccarton. There was a length between them that day, but Queen’s Pal was close to six lengths the better in the Champagne, in which Auchentoshan was fourth.

Queen’s Pal’s two starts this season, both on her home track at Wingatui. have produced a second and a third. The third was in the Dunedin Guineas for which she was the win favourite. She was one of two fillies in the Otago Classic, the other being Fairway Lass, which arrived late for fifth. Fairway Lass will oppose Queen’s Pal again tomorrow, but will have to wind up earlier on her run to have anything like a chance of beating the Otago filly at 1400 m. Auchentoshan had no chance of showing how she would measure up at weight-for-age at her latest start, in the South Island Thoroughbred Stakes. She was the slowest away and never got back into contention at 1400 m. But the high promise of her two-year-old autumn

programme, if fully recaptured here, could make her a worthy rival for Queen's Pal. Dainty Dish, like Queen's Pal, a daughter of the promising young sire, Palatable, goes into the Geraldine Challenge Stakes without having had a race “in anger” this season, but she was a promising place-getter in race trials at Motukarara on Tuesday. She was an impressive winner at her only start at two years, and if she has made average improvement with age she should give the Murfitt stable a good season. The Charles McDonald Memorial, first leg of the T.A.B. double, gives Sovereign’s Will a chance to break through for his first win from the Riccarton stable of Owen Anning. Sovereign's Will won four races last season, and the first of them was over 1400 m at Orari at the expense of

Just a Rebel and others. None of his wins last season was beyond a sprint distance, but he made a good fist of 2100 m when third two heads behind Flying Ribot in the Timaru Racing Club's Donald Grant Memorial. Sovereign's Will gave Flying Ribot 2kg in that race. Flying Ribot will go into tomorrow’s race on 3.5 kg worse terms. At their last meeting Sovereign's Will was fourth and Flying Ribot sixth in the Otago Racing Club’s Grandstand Handicap, but Flying Ribot's two seconds leading up to that race, one of them in the Geraldine Cup, might make him the more popular public fancy tomorrow. Frontline, the Geraldine Cup fifth at his last start, might be the best of the others, but Paddy Beaufort could be a real contender as he resumes at a middle distance after a sprints:programme.