Apprentice has first taste of success

Press, 27 June 1989, Page 30

Apprentice has first taste of success

By

DAVID MCCARTHY

The West Melton trainer, Ned Thistoll, had to fit in a visit to an eye specialist between races at Riccarton last Saturday but was back on course in time to watch his stable apprentice, Damian Browne, register his first success.

It was on Wairere Gold, trained by Thistoll in partnership with his daughter, Gail Whitnail.

While it was young Browne’s first win it is unlikely to be his last if Thistoll’s . experienced judgment is correct.

Thistoll rates Browne as promising an apprentice at this stage of his career as he has had through his hands and that encompasses a number of Can-

terbury’s leading riders of past and present. Grant Davison and Chris Johnson are two who served part of their time with Thistoll, a successful jockey himself for many years.

“He still has a way to go of course but I rate him as good as any at the moment,” said Thistoll. Wairere Gold’s win was a popular one not only because Browne’s triumph repaid the faith the stables has had in his promise by putting him up on most stable runners but also for Thistoll himself who has had some wretched luck in the last twelve months. He lost the use of his left eye last July in a freak accident while load-

ing a horse at Windwhistle and has had complications with it since.

‘An operation was carried out on the eye last week and the specialist was not highly popular with the trainer when he set an appointment for dressing the eye at 2 p.m. in the middle of the race programme where several stable horses were engaged.

"He asked me which was more important, the eye or the horses. I was tempted to say that the eye isn’t much good but the horses might be,” Thistoll quipped after the race.

Wairere Gold’s win was only the third for the stable in a season where fortune has been fickle to

the Thistolls but with the talented hurdler Ampac in form things could look up before the end of the winter.

Mr Geoff Maples, part owner of Ampac, shares in the racing lease of Wairere Gold, a former northerner, with Bill Berry, Vic Slade and Mrs Whitnail. Wairere Gold had been soundly beaten by Ampac in a trial last Thursday but this did not count against his chances as far as the stable was concerned.

“He does most of his work on his own. He’s a bit highly strung and that was the first time we had worked him in company. He didn’t enjoy it,” Whitnail said.