Trainer confounded by Precocious Lad

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 35

Trainer confounded by Precocious Lad

Special correspondent Auckland Racehorse trainers, no matter how experienced, are often confounded by the way their runners go, as Alan Jones found at Te Rapa on Saturday. Among the top of his trade for so long, Jones had a couple of good reasons, or so he thought, for believing that Royal Grit would be the best of his two starters in the Waikato Times Gold Cup. His other horse, Precocious Lad, had so needed his race the previous week that he could hardly Improve sufficiently to win over 2400 m.

After an early afternoon of steady rain, Royal Grit became even more his trainer’s choice. But in the end Precocious Lad was first and Royal Grit seventh, though with 200 m to go it seemed they would supply Jones with another quinella in the race, following the one by Avago and Chlmbu six years ago.

Both ridden by two young women who Jones started off in racing, Royal Grit (Catherine Treymane) and Precocious Lad (Linda Ballantyne) were quickly the first two in the Cup, Royal Grit leading with the other horse on his quarters.

About 300 m out Precocious Lad got the better of Royal Grit and took what proved a winning break. Rationale came at him hard right near the finish to run him to a neck.

Threesome was a length and a half away third, but with a performance as eye catching as any. Remarkably, as he has

stake earnings of nearly $500,000, this was only Precocious Lad’s fifth win and his first since he took the Manawatu Sires* Produce Stakes some 18 months ago. Between times he welghed-ln five times in Group races, though having to settle for minor placings. Often, according to Jones, he had been ridden against instructions.

Treymane, it seems, did everything she was told in the Cup, getting Precocious Lad up near the front before the first turn, even from so wide at the start.

Jones prepares Precocious Lad for Mr Derek David, an architect in Penang, who had the horse bought as a yearling by Ivan Allen, the most successful trainer in Singapore at the time and now living in England. A brown by Otehl Lad, Precocious Lad became another of the many great bargains from Wrightson Bloodstock’s Waikato Sale — he cost Allen a mere $20,000.

Jones will now aim Precocious Lad at the Lion Avondale Cup, on December 9 with the DB Auckland Cup on New Year’s Day to follow. The same programme is expected to be set Threesome which is beginning to look more and more the one they will all have to beat in the Auckland Cup, in which she finished third last year.

Threesome’s run was an Immeasurably better preliminary to Avondale and Ellerslie than those of most others behind her, which Included a firm favourite, Sounds Like

Fun (sixth), the last DB Auckland Cup winner, Kotare Chief (12th), and Cure (17th and a distant last). But each of these three can be excused, the going was so much against

Trying for the best footing, David Walsh kept Sounds Like Fun wide all the way but she was uncomfortable nevertheless. Walsh made a telling comment on her form: “Just forget she ever ran,** he said. The sudden rain, on a previously very firm surface, certainly made the ground tricky and for safety’s sake the track was given a light harrowing after the second race. Under a shallow, broken top it remained pretty hard and Precocious Lad was able to record 2:29.80, well outside the best, but a respectable time.

Matabele showed himself on the right way for Avondale’s big sprint, The Concorde, for which the trainer, Ray Johnson, has set him when he won the second leg of the double, a class 1,1400 m in style. The four-year-old, after racing close on the heels of the pacemaker, Stylish Lass, joined her on the home turn and then rushed clear. It was a measure of compensation for Johnson, the gelding's owner, Mr Ash Daley and the rider, Michael Coleman, who has such high hopes for Savana City in the Guineas, only for her to finish third. Matabele was a horse in training purchase by Mr Daley (for $52,000), and is one of 12 that Johnson trains for him at Matamata. ; ■