Popular double at Timaru

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 32

Popular double at Timaru

By

JACK BOYLE

Sea Swift from Ashburton, and Trotanoy from Cambridge, brought off a popular ladies first double at the Timaru Racing Club’s meeting yesterday.

Sea Swift had to battle like a tigress for a narrow win in the Sattherthwaite Handicap, but the three-year-old Trotanoy blitzed her rivals in the Timaru Herald Stakes.

She killed off with much superior speed in her front-running victory and beat the best of her South Island rivals by. close to four lengths.

Sea Swift showed she is on the right path, in the countdown for the Lion Brown Cup in winning the first leg of yesterday’s T.A.B. double.

She gamely resisted a late challenge from Blyme to win by half a head, but the final outcome of the race was in doubt for a time while the judicial committee considered an objection by Blyme’s rider, John Dowling.

This stemmed from an incident 300 m out when Dowling was looking for race room from the pack, but his protest was not successful.

Dowling switched Blyme closer to the inside to launch a challenge at

Sea Swift but the Ashburton mare found enough to keep him out by half a head. Sea Swift impressed her driver, Grant Davison, with her strength under pressure. “The other horse had the last run at her but she responded well under that challenge,” Davison said. Sea Swift will have her next race at Riccarton next week and another at the Banks Peninsula meeting on November 1 before the New Zealand Cup carnival. A five-year-old daughter of Auk and Gay Dinah, Sea Swift has now won nine races from 33 starts from the Ashburton stable of Peter and Dawn Williams. Davison has partnered her in three of those wins. Sea Swift was the best backed of Samasaan’s rivals in yesterday’s race. Samasaan opened in the betting at odds-on, but looked a hundred-to-one chance .after he got shuffled back through the field before the sprint started in a race distinguished by lack of true pace.

They ran the last 1200 m from the front end in 1:12.2, the final 600 in 35.45, and when they started on those last 600 metres, Samasaan was last of all. His cause was not helped when held up for two or three strides near the home turn by the tiring Tourneur, which

had difficulties with a slipped saddle. Samasaan wound up sixth in this, his last race before he goes to Australia. He will be flown to Auckland from Chrsitchurch next Friday and on to Melbourne from there four days later. Trotanoy completed an unbeaten early spring* South Island campaign in

winning the Timaru Herald Stakes yesterday. She opened her South Island campaign by winning the Canterbury Belle Stakes at Riccarton last Saturday and was even more impressive in slamming seven rivals at weight-for-age yesterday. Trotanoy will be flown back to the North Island next Tuesday to be prepared for a $60,000, 1600 m race for fillies at Te Rapa on Labour Day. If she performs well in that race she will be brought back to Riccarton for the One Thousand Guineas, a race her connections have also won with Noble Heights. “On her breeding, Trotanoy might be right at the edge of her best distance at 1600 m, but she certainly knows how to run over this trip,” her trainer, Laurie Laxon, said after David Johnson landed the grey a winner by three lengths and three-quarters over Hills Peak yesterday.

The Australian-bred Trotanoy is owned by Phillip and Peter Vela, who also have extensive racing interests in ' Australia as well as in New Zealand.