Top fillies may not start at Trentham

Press, 5 March 1987, Page 31

Top fillies may not start at Trentham

Special correspondent Wellington

Noble Times and Heavenly View, two of this season’s outstanding fillies, for different reasons, may not race at Trentham on Saturday. These two fillies, along with Jennifer Rush, from Cambridge, have been in outstanding form this season. Noble Times has won four of her five races and Heavenly View has won both of her two starts.

The southerly gale could keep Noble Times at home if it persists at Trentham, and Heavenly View seems 99 per cent sure to miss the meeting because of a foot injury. These two fillies along with Jennifer Rush (five wins and seven placings from 12 starts) and the Evergreen Stakes winner, Injustice, had a high class field for the $65,000 Sovereign Lodge Wakefield Stakes (1200 m on Saturday.

Yesterday morning the track at Trentham was described as easy, but the trainer of Noble Times, Gary Vile, will want to be certain that the rain has stopped and the track has started to dry before he makes his final decision later whether to. come south, or wait for Monday’s $40,000 Grangewilliam Stakes at New Plymouth.

“The filly’s in tip-top order, she’s as good as gold,” he said from Waitara yesterday. “She galloped really well yesterday.”

Noble Times had been earmarked for Trentham, but Vile put her in at New Plymouth once he heard that the weather had broken in the south.

Whether she races at Trentham or New Plymouth, it will be the first outing for the filly in the interests of her new owners. All the details of the sale, through the agencies of Clearwood Stud and Emmanual de Seroux, are now finalised. The Trentham, or New Plymouth, outing will be the final one for Noble Times before she heads for Sydney, where she is to run in the sAustl million Golden Slipper Stakes at Rosehill on April 11.

Noble Times is booked for Sydney on March 26, which will give her time to settle before the big race. Greg Childs will ride her in her New Zealand assignment before the trip and also in Sydney. Heavenly View, which won her debut at Trentham, running 1000 m in 56.48 s then won the ABS Juvenile on Saturday pulled a shoe at home on Monday. According to the trainer, Paddy Busuttin, she ran three nails into

the sole of her foot "as far as they could go.” Since then, Heavenly View has been unable to work on the track. “She couldn’t even work at the beach,” Busuttin said.

The foot has been bathed and the magneticpulse machine used on it. If she improves in the next 24 hours there is some chance that the Zephyr Bay filly will get to New Plymouth. But if there’s any doubt, Heavenly View will stay home, Busuttin said. “I had a preference for Trentham, but she’s 99 per cent sure not to get there.”

However, if her racing options collapse in the next few days, Heavenly View has two possibilities before the $150,000 Swettenham Sires’ Produce at Awapuni on March 28.

She was nominated, as an afterthought, for the $lO,OOO Endeavour Handicap (1200 m at Trentham on March 14 and as well for the $12,000 Fairdale Stud Juvenile (1200 m at Awapuni on March 21.