Stormy Knight courageous in Grand National Hurdles win

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 36

Stormy Knight courageous in Grand National Hurdles win

By

J. J. BOYLE

In one of the nicest possible ways Stormy Knight renewed family links with the South Island for Mrs Beth Fuge when he won the Grand National Hurdles at Riccarton yesterday.

The Canadian-born Mrs Fuge, wife of Stormy Knight’s Tauherenikau owner-trainer, Don Fuge, came to New Zealand to settle 25 years ago, but her paternal grandfather, Mr Jack Wallis, was brought up in Canterbury, in the Lincoln district. Mr Fuge stayed at home looking after the other members of his team yesterday, but Mrs Fuge met all the demands of a triumphant occasion after Stormy Knight won yesterday’s $30,000 race by two lengths from Insoluble, which had tried so bravely to do it all in front. Stormy Knight was the

seventh favourite of 11 in this, his sixth win from 70 starts. The eight-year-old Reindeer gelding showed great depths of stamina and high courage to get up for his win at odds of 15-to-one in the hands of the Hastings and former Woodville jockey, John McGifford. “He ploughed right through the third last and I thought that was that. I did not favour my chance of picking up a class 1 horse which got another couple of lengths on me when my fellow hit the third last,” McGifford said. McGifford, aged 28, gave up race riding for

two years and worked as a computer clerk for the New Zealand Racing Conference.

His decision to resume in the ranks of the jumping riders and his successful partnership with Stormy Knight yesterday pleased the National winner’s connections greatly. McGifford, in tandem with Danny Walker, of Tauherenikau, had much to do with the education of Stormy Knight for a jumping career.

“Three miles walk and trot to the track at Tauherenikau, three miles of the same home again, and apart from that he’s a farm-trained horse,” Mrs