Day of mile time trials planned at Ashburton

Press, 24 November 1982, Page 43

Day of mile time trials planned at Ashburton

By G. K. YULE A first for New Zealand — a day of mile time trials — will be held at the Ashburton racecourse on Sunday, January 23. The trials, for individual horses, are being arranged by the Canterbury branch of the Standardbred Breeders’ Association and the Ashburton Trotting Club. "Inquiries we have made have shown , there is great interest in the idea,” said Mr Peter O’Rourke, a member of the committee of the association. “It is intended to run up to a maximum of 40 time trials, and it is intended to run them off at the rate of about seven or eight an hour,” he said.

“The track will be graded after each trial and, as it takes about five minutes for a circuit of the track by the equipment, there has to be a

delay of a few minutes between each run,” he added. Special meetings at which horses may be individually trialed over one mile were approved at a recent meeting of the executive of the Trotting Conference after submissions from the New Zealand Standardbred Breeders’ Association had been considered, Amendments to time trial regulations provide for such meetings to be held by registered trotting clubs. Trials must be started by a registered starter and three approved timekeepers must be used.

A galloping prompter may be used, such horse not being allowed to head the trialist at any stage. Should the trialing horse break, it will be disqualified. The organisation holding the meeting must issue a certificate to the owner of

each horse trialed showing the official time, with the certificate signed by the stipendiary steward in charge of the meeting; Random swabbing may be used during the day, but any horse breaking a national record must be swabbed and found negative before any such time is recognised. The major changes to the regulations provide for waiving the normal fee of $lOO payable for an ordinary time trial, and the deletion of the time criteria previously required for such attempts. The compulsory swabbing of each trialist has also been deleted.

A similar set of individual time trials has been run at Geelong, in Victoria, for at least the past two seasons, and at least one set has been run near Sydney. All have proved most popular. After one of the series in

Geelong, the 10 fastest three-year-old fillies were invited to contest a mile race at Moonee Valley.

The Ashburton track is accepted by most trainers and horsemen as' providing the fastest circuit for mile racing in Canterbury, if not New Zealand, and many consider that a top horse would be capable of approaching Lord Module’s national time trial record of Imin 54.95. The horses running trials at Ashburton will be able to use the American speed sulky imported by the Standardbred Breeders’ Association. This is considered to help improve times by from one to two seconds for one mile.

The opportunity to return a fast time is certain to provve popular with owners of fillies and mares as these will be recognised for Stud Book purposes.