Savana City proving shrewd investment

Press, 12 January 1987, Page 29

Savana City proving shrewd investment

Special correspondent Auckland The $65,000 which a Matamata owner, Mr Ash Daley, paid for Savana City at the Sydney yearling sales looked even

more a shrewd investment when the filly won so impressively at Avondale on Saturday. When allowing the two favourites, Jennifer Rush and Noble Times, such a start into the last 200 metres of the Kampala Stakes Savana City looked set an impossible task yet she won decisively, by a length. It was Savana City’s second success in seven starts which have brought in, also, “a couple of minor placings and, all told nearly $50,000 in stakes. The way she is progressing, and considering the longer distances to be run through the autumn, she looks likely to win more this season. Savana City has been “paid up” all through for the Golden Slipper Stakes in Sydney but it seems much more likely she will be kept at home. The Matamata Breeders’ Stakes on February 14 is to be her next assignment,

affording the chance of another encounter with Noble Times and Jennifer Rush.

Noble Times, even allowing the check she suffered with some 600 metres to run, and Jennifer Rush had their chances to beat Savana City but had no answer for the other filly’s finishing run. The second placing of Noble Times — promoted over Jennifer Rush after an inquiry was more than sufficient, though, to win her the Barclay Two-Year-Old Fillies’ Series even with one race, the Matamata Breeders’ Stakes, to come.

Noble Times, after winning two of the first three in the four-race series, now has 37 points with Savana City 15, and Jennifer Rush, third.