Fifty One makes century for Busuttin

Press, 14 August 1989, Page 30

Fifty One makes century for Busuttin

By

DAVID McCARTHY

Fifty One made a hundred for the Foxton trainer, Paddy Busuttin, at Riccarton on Saturday. Fifty One’s narrow win over his stablemate, Windsor’s Fortune, was the trainer’s one-hundredth win at Riccarton since 1981 when a team of three horses, Beaufort Lass, Diplomante and Hagenblue, all won on the first day of the New Zealand Cup meeting in Busuttin’s first Riccarton campaign. Subsequently the trainer has been the season leader at Riccarton on three occasions. He won 18 races on the track in 1983-84, 17 the next year and 19 races during 1986-87. Busuttin equalled that total last season, but was only runner-up to the Kerr stable over all. . Fifty One and Windsor’s Fortune are in the care of a former jockey, Terry Bryden, who is the Busuttin foreman at Riccarton. Busuttin was the first trainer in New Zealand to set up two operations when Jim Melton came south to supervise a team for the Foxton trainer in 1987 and Bryden succeeded Melton when the latter struck out on his own last year. Many of Busuttin’s biggest training successes have been achieved at Riccarton, including a New Zealand Cup with Gallipoli last November. Gallipoli, like Fifty One, is by the Canterbury-based sire, Palatable, and is due to resume next Saturday on a campaign aimed at repeating his major triumph of last season* The trainer’s main ambition this season is to win the Caulfield Cup with Red Chiffon which resumed on an encouraging note at Levin on Saturday.