N.I. campaign for unbeaten youngster

Press, 9 February 1984, Page 26

N.I. campaign for unbeaten youngster

By

J. J. BOYLE

Black Arrow, the successful favourite in the Oaklands Handicap at Riccarton yesterday, will now be prepared for two-year-old races in the North Island. The Riccarton-trained Licorice Stick colt will have his next race at Woodville on February 18 and a week later he will tilt at Eclipse Stakes honours at Ellerslie. Black Arrow’s win yesterday was his second win from as many starts for Mrs Mary Sutherland from the Riccarton stable of Ron McCann and Pam Robson.

He won yesterday by three parts of a length from Secured Money, a halfbrother to the Wellington Cup winner, Secured Deposit, which was having his first start.

Secured Money was the fastest finisher in the race, but Black Arrow never had to come under pressure to win.

“When he got to the front he thought it was all over and eased on me,” Black Arrow’s trainer-jockey, Ron McCann, said after the race. Secured Money, an attractive Takearisk colt from Barry Taggart’s Riccarton

stable, will not have many more demands made on him as a two-year-old. He might be given a race at Easter, but his trainer believes a patient policy could pay off, an opinion shared by the North Island jockey, Gary Phillips, who rode him yesterday. Hide the’ Loot, a Smuggler colt having his first start from the stable of Peter Jones, who is also partowner of the chestnut, saved third by a neck from Miss Tryphena Bay, which had vied with him for the lead until Black Arrow passed them about 200 m out.