Early retirement for Nardinski?

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 44

Early retirement for Nardinski?

By

JEFF SCOTT

An X-ray to be taken today of the top pacer, Nardinski, could confirm an early retirement for last season’s Great Northern Derby winner. “He’s not lame but is tender when pressure is applied to the sesamoid in his near-front leg,” said Jack Smolensk!, Nardinski’s Weedons trainer, yesterday. “I rather suspect there is something amiss and if there is, he would be retired,” Smolensk! said of the Nardins Byrd—Gina Marie entire, which should have a big stud career ahead of him. Nardinski, the winner of the New Zealand Juvenile Championship as a two-year-old, confirmed he was on target to complete the Auckland Trotting Club’s triple crown in the TNT Monger Championship for four-year-olds next Monday* by winning m 3min

18.6 s for 2600 m from a stand on Show Day at Addington, but already some signs of concern were there. “He was very tender on pulling up and did not run on the way he should have on the first day,” Smolensk! said. Nardinski has been troubled by sesamoiditis (an irritation on the bone), in the leg since his two-year-old days and this condition is now troubling the suspensory ligament in his nearfront leg as well. “The owners would rather retire him than have him break down,” Smolenski said. The Cup class pacer, Premiership, which was also to have raced at the Auckland Christmas meeting, has received a bump to a leg, but the injury is not serious. “He should be right in a couple of weeks,” said his regular reinsman, Anthony 1 Butt, yesterday.