Advice pays off

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 29

Advice pays off

Some canny advice from voices of long experience helped the Riccarton apprentice, Lorna Cook, to win successive races at Riccarton yesterday.

Red Back, a doubtful starter on Tuesday and an unknown quantity on softer tracks, powered away from a helpless opposition to win the Kirwee Handicap for Cook’s employers, Dave and Jan Kerr. Then Vinegar Lil and the youthful rider continued a successful association and won the next race on the programme, the Gimcrack Handicap. While both horses may well have won in any case their path to the winner’s circle was the shortest one.

Cook had both horses close to the rail on the advice of Dave Kerr and Vinegar Lil’s trainer, Maurice Campbell. “It’s as good a strip as there is on the track and no-one had been using it,”

said Kerr who bought Red Back privately as a youngster. The dashing chestnut, which carried Graham Heaton to victory in the retired riders’ race on Monday as a “lead-up” to yesterday’s success, won the Dunedin Guineas earlier in the summer and is pointed at the final of the South Island Three-Year-Old Championship at Wingatui on Anzac Day, a 1600 m event worth $30,000.

A son of Centurius, Red Back has been attracting the attention of overseas buyes and certainly made no race of things yesterday.

It was the twentieth success for the Kerr stable this season — one which makes it the most successful on averages in New Zealand. Cook has now posted 15 wins in the same time and did not allow a fall from Hot Sterling early in the day to affect her.

Maurice Campbell, one of the most successful allround horsemen in New Zealand, used some simple logic planning Vinegar Lil’s path to success with Cook.

“In my view it is a good easy track. There didn’t seem any need to run wide. So we plotted to run close to the rail,” said Campbell after the Truly Vain filly’s easy win. Campbell is taking no risks with her success though and will reserve Vinegar Lil for the Marlborough meeting. “Until last Monday she hadn’t won a race since this time last year. She had had a few problems and it’s been a task getting her back to her best. She’s done fairly between the races but I wouldn’t ask her to back up again the last dhy now she has come right,” said the Feilding horseman who will not be present on the final day of the meeting on Saturday.