Profitable day for Riccarton trainer

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 31

Profitable day for Riccarton trainer

By W. R. CARSTON Michael Pitman could not have brought White Lip to peak fitness at a more opportune time. The Amalgam mare’s all-the-way win, in the hands of Maree Lyndon, in the Anthony Runacres Handicap, on her home course, on Saturday gave the Riccarton trainer one of his most profitable days in racing.

As well as receiving his percentage for training the mare Pitman will split the $6250 she earned for first for he also has a half-share in the ownership of White Lip with Mr and Mrs John Lincoln, of Matamata. As an additional bonus he picked up half of the $17,136.90 dividend which was paid out to each of the 29 ticket-holders who selected the five correct combinations in the Canterbury Jockey Club’s terminating jackpot. Pitman’s partner in the jackpot venture was Mr Brooke McKenzie, a retired Christchurch businessman.

The Pitman-McKenzie partnership held three of the 427 tickets still “live” going into the last leg. One of those tickets went on to the third placegetter, Noble Note, another was on Sterling Exchange, which did well to finish fourth after his rider got into difficulties with a slipped saddle, and the third ticket was, naturally, on White Lip. With an opening pool of $128,790 on Saturday it was anticipated that the final figure would be well in excess of $500,000 and it would have surprised no one if it had reached a figure half as much as that again.

When the total had increased by $176,000 just half an hour after the first race had been run the chances of such a goal being reached seemed possible. Within the next hour jackpot hunters had poured another $120,000odd into the pool and 20 minutes before the first jackpot race was scheduled to be run total contributions to the day’s jackpot pool had been swelled by $430,313. Slightly less than $50,000 came in in those last 20 minutes and that, along with the starting pool, brought the total to just over the $600,000 mark. After normal deductions the amount left for redistribution was $496,970. Although the winners of Saturday’s selected jackpot races were by no means longshots — the lone double-figure dividend payer among them was White Lip — the rate of dropouts as the exercise progressed was rather dramatic. After Red Hawk won the Benson and Hedges Gold Cup at odds of five-to-one there were only 54,686 “live” tickets still left in the pool and that number was reduced to 12,486 when the second fancy, Cure, beat the popular fancy, Tidal Light, in the Wrightson New Zealand One Thousand Guineas.

It was no problem for Courier Bay to justify his favouritism for the Printpak Handicap but that still left only 3916 in with a chance and their numbers were reduced to 427 when Serene Pulse

nosed the hot favourite, Eye Full, away from victory in the Lion Brown Handicap. The distribution of those 427 tickets on the runners in the final jackpot race was as follows. — Noble Note (84), Sea Swift (36), Tirana (4), Bi Noble (34), Sterling Exchange (89), Kiss Me Kate (4), Nomusa (19), Aegean Princess (8), White Lip (29), French Polish (73), Rakanui (9) and Te Kaahu (2).