Gaffa’s game win fixes Perth trip

Press, 10 December 1983, Page 23

Gaffa’s game win fixes Perth trip

By

J. J. BOYLE

“It’s all on for Perth after that one,” Gaffa’s Riccarton owner-trainer Dave Kerr said after his three-year-old won the Canterbury Jockey Club’s Phar Lap “2000” on his home track yesterday. Gaffa, with skilled, sympathetic assistance from Grant Cooksley, found the courage and class on a trac' r not to his liking to win the middle distance weight-for-age feature race by half a length after giving his strongest rival Every Show a long start from the 800 metres.

While confirming a start in the $300,000 Derby in Perth on December 26 after yesterday’s race Dave Kerr said it was possible his My Friend Paul gelding would soon be sold to Australia.

“There’s been a big offer for him this week, but they are looking for a three-year-old for the autumn,” Kerr said yesterday.

In the meantime he will busy himself completing plans to fly Gaffa out of

Christchurch next Friday, with hopes of having one lead-up race to the Derby. “He’ll get the Derby distance no trouble, and will give Bounty Hawk a run for his money,” Grant Cooksley said after yesterday’s race. Cooksley, who was preserving his unbeaten association with Gaffa into its third start yesteday, said he had gained new respect for the three-year-old under the conditions of this latest race.

“He was not handling that track well,” Cooksley said later. “I just let the reins fall down his neck and he relaxed, but he responded like a good horse when I asked him to go on with it.”

Cooksley has made four previous visits to Australia, but he has not ridden in Perth, and he plans to be there about a week before the Australian Derby to familiarise himself with the track.

Every Show’s performance delighted his Mosgiel owner-trainer, Mr Gordon

Thomson.

“He was not handling that track, and I doubt if Gaffa would have caught him if they had raced on top of the ground,” Mr Thomson said later.

Next for Every Show will be the James Hazlett Gold Cup at Wingatui, with the Timaru Gold Cup to follow. Every Show saved second by half a length from The Dimple, which lacked the seasoned racing condition of most .of her rivals, and came to the end of a likelylooking run close to the post. Noble Jewel, the second favourite on the strength of his third in the Canterbury Gold Cup, followed Gaffa on the home turn, but did not have the powers of acceleration in the conditions to get into the struggle for dividend-bearing places. He wound up fourth, in a gap of four and a half lengths from The Dimple — not a bad run for a horse likely to return to handicap racing for the Dunedip Cup on December 26.