Joal third

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 33

Joal third

NZPA Sydney The New Zealand mare, Joal, showed her gameness again when she followed up a run in the 3200 m Melbourne Cup on Tuesday to run home a solid third in the sAustBl,ooo Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington on Saturday.

While the rest of the cup contenders were recovering at their stables around Melbourne, Joal was tackling her third major race in a week in the 2500 m of the Queen Elizabeth, and more than made amends for her ninth in the Cup by running third to Colour Page and Northern Find. Joal, which ran sixth in the L. K. S. Mackinnon Stakes last . Saturday, made it another pay day for her connections with a solid run that saw Colour Page clear out from the pack with the other two coming after him, and Joal making the greatest impression on the margins to finish three-quarters of a length from Northern Find and two lengths from the winner. The other two New Zealand gallopers in the race were Reingard and Norfolk Bard, which had both missed out on a Melbourne Cup start and were looking for the Queen Elizabeth to provide some compensation. Reingard, dual Canberra Cup winner and a victim of the Victoria Racing Club’s policy of not nominating emergencies for the Melbourne Cup, raced solidly until midway down the home straight, when the top half-dozen cleared away leaving him eighth. Norfolk Bard, ridden by former New Zealand jockey, Bob Skelton, raced at the back of the field for the entire journey, and beat only the tired horses in running home for ninth. For Skelton, who is on the comeback after having his right leg smashed in a race fall last year, the ride on Norfolk Bard was one of the spin-offs for his thrilling second on Rising Fear' in the Melbourne Cup. The 55-year-old Skelton confessed that bookings of his services had been "a little bit slow” since his return to the saddle a month ago, but he was hoping that his Cup ride would see that change. “I was happy even to get a ride in the Cup when there were so many in-form jockeys around without mounts, and to come home second a real thrill,” he said. “I’m hoping that will attract a few more rides, and because of the Cup I had two rides yesterday.” The other ride produced a 12th place on Our Dizzy Heights in the Remy Martin Stakes. If the Melbourne Cup proved victorious for Dubai Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rasheed Al Maktoum and his horse, At Talaq, the Queen Elizabeth proved a disaster for his brother Mohammad, whose newly imported English gelding Bourbon Boy ran second last.

Bourbon Boy carried heavy early money for the race but the five-year-old is still tuned to northern hemisphere time. He is beginning to grow his winter coat and will now be spelled.

The other feature on the Flemington programme was the sAustlso,ooo Ampol Stakes over 1600 m, and the Sydney based Chanteclair won the Australian spring mile double by adding the Ampol to the Epsom Handicap he won in Sydney last month. The Tommy Smithtrained entire earned a sAust2oo,ooo bonus for his efforts which produced an emphatic length and a half win over Eastern Classic which in turn scored by a nose from Bicentenary. Chanteclair, which had always raced handy, went to the front at the top of the straight and cleared away, always in command. Former New Zealand galloper, Ma Chiquita, finished 10th in the 18-horse field, while Riverdale, which took out the double in 1984, beat only two home.