Doubts about 'phantom’ filly’s parentage removed

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 31

Doubts about 'phantom’ filly’s parentage removed

by

J. J. BOYLE

Miss Shavary is not one of the top fancies for today’s $lOO,OOO Wrightson One Thousand Guineas, but no filly in the race has a more unusual background. Earlier this year, following a report from the Lincoln College blood typing unit, the New Zealand Racing Conference advised Miss Shavary’s Christchurch breeder-owner, Mr lan Ballinger, that the filly would be removed from the stud book.

It was claimed, as a result of the Lincoln unit’s tests, that Miss Shavary could not be the 1981 offspring of Avaray and

Shiseido. In the face of opposition from the conference, Mr Ballinger took the matter further. He sent blood samples from Miss Shavary and her dam Shiseido to a blood typing unit in Brisbane.

Now, all of five months after his move, he has been advised by the New Zealand Racing Conference that there is no further doubt about Miss Shavary’s parentage — that she is, in fact, the offspring of Avaray and Shiseido.

The conference also advised Mr Ballinger yesterday that the Lincoln College unit, after taking fresh blood samples, now agrees

with the Queensland finding. “It’s been a long battle, and an expensive one, and the matter does not end there,” Mr Ballinger said yesterday. Mr Ballinger said that apart from the considerable expenses he had to meet incidental to the tests made in Queensland the filly, which is raced on lease by four patrons of Karen McStay’s Woodend stable, had lost racing opportunities because of the mix-up.

The conference would now allow the filly to run at the Marlborough meeting in September, and only after a threat of a court injunction was she allowed to start at

the Geraldine Racing Club’s meeting on September 24. Miss Shavary impressively cleared maiden ranks that day, winning by four lengths. Two starts since have yielded two thirds. Mr and Mrs Peter Binnie, of Kaiapoi, must have followed the recent fortunes of Miss Shavary with mixed feelings.

They sold the filly’s dam, Shiseido, at the 1981 South Island sale in Christchurch believing she was empty. Mr Ballinger was the purchaser, and within a very short time found that the mare was in foal to the 1980 mating with the Paramount Stud sire, Avaray.