First $l00,000 thoroughbred race for S.I.

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 31

First $l00,000 thoroughbred race for S.I.

The South Island’s first $lOO,OOO race for throughbreds, the Wrightson New Zealand One Thousand Guineas, will be the glittering attraction on the opening day of the Canterbury Jockey Club's three-day Cup Carnival at Riccarton tomorrow.

The quality of the field for the first of the “national” classics can do nothing but add lustre to the complete carnival, and there is the prospect of an additional bonus for thsoe with home-province loyalties.

Canterbury Belle was bred, and is owned and trained in Canterbury, and she will bear red and black colours as she faces her stiffest challenge yet. What she has achieved so far argues of an exciting

young talent, and if she fulfils all that high promise tomorrow, it will be something more than an ordinary racing occasion, something to savour and remember. The Canterbury Jockey Club will distribute close to $440,000 in stakes at its Cup carnival. The Benson and Hedges Gold Cup, for stayers, and the Edward Lumley handicap, for sprinters, will be the major supporting races for the Wrightson-sponsored One Thousand Guineas on tomorrow’s programme. The $70,000 New Zealand Two Thousand Guineas, a race to be televised live, will be the major attraction on the club’s second-day programme, next Wednesday-. .... . . ....

This will be only the 12th renewal of the Two Thou-

sand Guineas, but in its brief existence it can boast of a distinguished gallery of winners, some of them commanding wide-ranging interest Persuasian and the illfated Altitude both won in the colours of the Texas millionaire, Nelson Bunker Hunt

The first Two Thousand Guineas winner, Fury’s Order, returned to Riccarton t a year later to win the New Zealand Cup and, as a five-year-old, he won the rich weight-for-age Cox Plate, at Moonee Valley.

Balmerino want on to beat the best in Australia and later to carry the flag bravely for New Zealand in the United States, England, and the Continent

Vice Regal, which emerged a year later, was an exciting and rewarding performer on both sides of the Tasman and, like Balmerino, has emerged as a progenitor of high-class performers.

And just to show that the classic was not the exclusive preserve of visitors to the “mainland,” Little Brown Jug and Dave Kerrtrained Clansman and Gaffa, have achieved home track victories in three of the last five years. Until recent years there was something of an “after-the-ball” atmosphere about the third day of the C.J.C. carnival. No more.

That was changed with the decision to transfer the New Zealand Cup from the first to the third day, in concert with the famous sprint race, The Stewards.

The club’s most historic race, the weight-for-age Canterbury Gold Cup and the Welcome Stakes, for

two-year-olds, join the Chemico New Zealand Cup and the Movements Internatiohal Stewards on the programme for the final day of this year’s meeting. The Canterbury Gold Cup is a race for the Commissionaires and the like, a race to appeal strongly to all, but most of all to the racing purists. But the New Zealand Cup, as a handicap race, holds its appeal for the dollar-each-way punter who does not have to be one of the turfs great historians to realise there is always a chance in such a race that some battler’s gift horse, if he is barve enough and lucky enough, will cut down the tall poppies. Whatever emerges from the Canterbury Jockey Club’s carnival, you can be sure there will be no repetition of the brilliant theme, almost without variations, of the Cup meeting of 80 years ago.

George Gatenby Stead, New Zealand’s Robert Sangster of those times, saw his colour bearers win 12 races outright (another deadheated for first) at the 1904 Cup meeting.

He won the New Zealand Cup with Grand Rapids, the Derby and Oaks with Nightfall, the Canterbury Cup with Martian, the Welcome Stakes with Munjeet, the Members with Savoury. Savoury also dead-heated for first in the Jockey Club Handicap.

That season, Mr Stead was leading owner for the ninth succcessive year with £ 11,456.

Bid deal? It certainly was, when at that time advertisers were seeking purchasers of a new Beeston Humber car for £4OO, a six-roomed villa just off Bealey Avenue could be bought for £550, and a “stylish” sac suit for 70 shillings.