Commissionaire irresistible on favourite course

Press, 11 March 1983, Page 10

Commissionaire irresistible on favourite course

By

J. J. BOYLE

Commissionaire makes irresistible appeal at his best distance on his favourite course at Trentham tomorrow, but there is no corresponding standout in the first leg of the Wellington Racing Club’s T.A.B. double, the Chalmers Stakes.

Commissionaire gets his chance to improve a brilliant five-year-old record in the D.B. 1600. He goes into the $45,000 weight-for-age metric mile as winner of his last four starts. And he will be assured of favouritism unless the track becomes soft or worse. The Chalmers will give the handicap stayers their final chance at 3200 m for the season.

Four Crowns has won at the distance, and some of the others have had near misses. But this race, like the big cup races earlier in the season, does not appear to offer a stayer of established class, or even a burgeoning talent. The result should be a wide spread of fancies. Four Crowns won the 1981 Brisbane Cup under 52.5 and will go into tomorrow’s race with one kilo more.

He is 2kg below Bound to Honour, at four years one of the youngest in the field, and a mare with an admirably consistent record over the shorter courses. Bound to Honour just failed to last out 3200 m in the Auckland Cup finishing fifth. She did not do quite as well in the Wellington Cup but she seldom runs badly to drop her far down the list of possibilities.

There certainly could be no more popular winner than Bound to Honour. Macloud matches Bound to Honour in popularity, if only for his near misses at this distance. He was third in the Chalmers a year ago, and, this season third in the Wellington Cup and a luckless fourth in the New Zealand Cup. Bold Monarch, the Wellington Cud fifth, will be one of the more popular fancies

from the middle of the handicap. But an equally good case could be made for Myra May, the only South Island stayer in the field. Myra May which made a favourable first impression at the meeting was a fastfinishing third over 2000 m on Wednesday. Her dam, Artifice, won at 3200 m and the Sovereign’s Eagle mare from Gore could profit most from the situation if there is any easing in the footing.