Decline in entries must concern club

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 49

Decline in entries must concern club

By

J. J. BOYLE

An entry of only 30 sprinters for a $lOO,OOO race at Trentham near the end of a busy programme of summer racing can hardly have brought comfort to officials of the Wellington Racing Club.

The Wrightson Handicap (1200 m has become one of the major attractions of the first day of the Trentham summer carnival since the Wellington club moved its cup to the third day a week later.

From an original entry of 47 last summer the club was left with a field of 10.

Next month the Wellington Racing Club will be staging its cup carnival without the added attraction of yearling sales at Trentham in the same week. And a sharp drop in entries for the Wrightson Handicap and other feature races invites the opinion that in isolation a Trentham racing carnival has lost some of the appeal it held formerly.

There is a welter of racing between now and January 23, the day the Trentham carnival opens, and demands made on horses by way of travelling and racing on summer tracks in the next six weeks could be reflected in the number of horses going into the Wellington club's Helds. The sharp decline in

entries for Trentham is not confined to the Wrightson Handicap. The $300,000 Foster’s Wellington Cup entry has dropped from 97 to 77 and the $lOO,OOO Jarden Mile from 85 to 64. A few weeks ago South Islanders might have been looking to the Foster’s Wellington Cup as a rewarding vehicle to compare the ability of Samasaan, the 1976 winner, and Blovinski, a game second last January. But, sadly, Blovinski is dead and Samasaan has been eased out of training.

Random Chance, from Wingatui, was one of the predictable cup entries, but he has a demanding programme on Auckland courses in the meantime, with the DB Auckland Cup one of the attractive targets.

The successful Ashbur-ton-trained stayer, Sea Swift, also has the Auckland cup on her programme, but does not figure amongst the entries for the Foster’s Wellington Cup.

Peter Williams, who, in partnership with his wife

Dawn, has prepared Sea Swift to win two Invercargill Gold Cups, did not consider a start for the mare in the big one at Trentham on January 30 because she had failed to get the metric two miles in two previous attempts, one of them in the Wellington Cup last summer.

“She also missed out in the New Zealand Cup, but we’ll have a shot at the Auckland Cup because Ellerslie does not seem to make such heavy demands on stamina,’’ Williams said yesterday.

The Williams stable could still have a Wellington Cup runner, in Moderation. “He's never run a bad race at Trentham,” Williams said yesterday of the Double Nearco gelding which at his last start there was third behind Silver Elm in the Gloaming Stakes in May, and won a class 3 2400 m event at Ellerslie in April. The Wellington Club will have Empire Rose as its major attraction for its $300,000 cup and has hopes of additional Australian interest in the race.

An Australian entry for the cup is Melody Moss, a five-year-old Moss Trooper mare trained in Queensland by the former New Zealander, Kaye Tinsley. Tinsley has also made an entry for the $125,000 New Zealand St Leger with Savoy, a gelding by the young boom sire Grosvenor. But one of Grosvenor’s more talented New Zea-land-based sons, Westminster, is missing from the entry for the 2500 m classic. Other notable absentees are the Levin Classic winner. Young Indian, and the talented Taranaki-trained Poetic Prince. Poetic Prince went into the paddock for a freshener after his meritorious spring campaign in Melbourne and a 2500 m race in January did not fit in with plans to prepare him for rich autumn three-year-old races in Sydney.

The Air New Zealand Stakes at Ellerslie in February could be his major mission before he goes to Sydney.