Payne shifting next week

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 52

Payne shifting next week

By

JEFF SCOTT

The Rangiora horseman, Ross Payne, leaves Canterbury for his newlyappointed North Taieri establishment early next week with an ambition, at some stage of his career to compete in the Air New Zealand Drivers’ Championship series.

“That’s the main reason for the shift,” said Payne. “I will be trying to get more drives further south.”

At the same time Payne is not about to pass up the opportunity to drive the talented C 6 pacer, Revolution. "It will still come back and drive him whenever he races,” said Payne. Payne is frustrated by the lack of opportunities in the competitive Canterbury arena, even though ironically he has been in slightly more demand in recent months. “It is bad when Jack Smolensk!, who I think is the best reinsman in New Zealand, can only get

three drives at some meetings here,” said Payne. Payne has been closely monitoring the laying of a 1000 metre all-weather training strip at his Dunedin quarters and is pleased with the results.

“It is a beautiful track. It doesn’t matter how much it rains, the horses won’t miss any work on it?’

A bam, 44 metres long, is almost completed, housing 20 horses, while Payne estimates he will have facilities to take up to 30 standardbreds.

Payne, aged 31, has driven 61 winners to date including 26 as a junior reinsman. His best season was in the 1980-81 term when he reined nine winners, while he has notched three wins already this term. Nelroy, a three-year old son of El Patron which finished third at the Rangiora trials on Monday, and another maiden, Marquis Mark, will be Payne’s first representatives to race from his new quarters at the Forbury Park meeting on October 10. Payne’s racing stable suffered a setback recently with the premature retirement of Tuapeka Knight’s older half-sister, Tuapeka Belle, a qualifier in 3:12 (2400 m behind Finest Hour at Addington in February. Insured for $125,000, the Out to Win mare, also a half-sister to Maureen’s Dream (1:58.8, 2000 m), nearly died after her condition deteriorated badly from a liver complaint over the winter. She is still being nursed back to satisfactory condition.