Mr Peter South’s 105th win

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 30

Mr Peter South’s 105th win

By J. J. BOYLE Orb gave his part-owner, Mr Peter South, his 105th success as an owner when he beat his three-year-old rivals comfortably in the Canterbury Jockey Club’s Meadow Mushrooms Handicap at Riccarton yesterday. Mr South races Orb in partnership with Mrs Pat Corboy, whose husband trains the Noble Bijou gelding at Washdyke, and has carefully guided him through a programme now

productive to wins at his last four starts. Orb is this season’s Dunedin and Southland Guineas winner, but his connections resisted the temptation to go after bigger game with him at Trentham last month. Next for Orb will be the Otago Racing Club’s White Robe Lodge Stakes, and then his connections will be thinking about a North Island campaign for the young star of the stable.

Orb bears the colours carried with such distinction by Grey Way. “He’s a different type of horse to old ‘Blue’, but he’s the best horse I’ve had since him,” Mr South said yesterday.

The Washdyke jockey, Raymond Bruce, allowed Orb to show his front-run-ning skills in winning the Dunedin and Southland Guineas, and saw no reason to change the tactics yesterday.

Bruce confined his afterrace impressions to a succinct: “He blew a bit.” Orb’s trainer did not find that surprising. The star of the Corboy stable lost a day or two’s work last month when he pulled a shoe and stood on it. Fortunately there were no on-going problems and Orb’s position as favourite for yesterday’s race was never in doubt.

Best of Orb’s rivals yesterday was Blovinski, but he

was a length and a quarter back, and grabbed second by only half a neck from Satiny’s Pride and Million Joys, which could not be separated for third. While the camera could not separate Satiny’s Pride and Million Joys, the club’s judicial committee effected that separation at an inquiry. Satiny’s Pride was relegated to fifth, and Pounding, Orb’s best-backed rival, was promoted to fourth.