NOTES AND COMMENTS (By Sir Bedivero).

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1914, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS (By Sir Bedivero).

The Masterton meeting will take place on Wednesday and Thursday next, and a special train will leave the racecourse each evening at 5.45 o'clock, arriving at Wellington at 10.45. There will thus be no necessity for local residents to spend a night in the area of continual drought. Most satisfactory acceptances were received for events to be decided on the opening day. Nominations for the New Zealand St. Leger, Trentham Gold Cup, and all handicap events to be run at the Wellington Autumn Meeting are due next Friday. * Mr. G. L. Stead leaves Auckland for Sydney on Monday next for the purpose of seeing Bon Ton race at Randwick. His Great Easter candidate, Sauci, is galloping well, and promises to be hard to beat. At present no rider has been secured for him, but it is understood that the mount has been offered to a Wairarapa horseman. No details in respegt to the race for the Grand National were cabled, and we are therefore loft entirely in the dark as to the fate which befell Covert Coat, Ballyhackle, Irish Mail, a«d other wellfancied candidates. So far as Britain was concerned, the situation was only just saved, and that by an eight-year-old gelding whose name was right at the bottom of the handicap. Sunlock, who probably started at long odds, doei not seem to have raced either oil tlie flat | or over fences until tho year before last, when he ran second at Croxton Park for the Farmers' Plate, a hurdle race worth 65 Soya. Last year he re-commenced moderately enough by finishing second for the Farmers' Plate at Melton. He then took tho Farmers' Plate at Croxton Park, in which ho had been beaten the previous year, ran second for the Farmers' Hurdles at the Quorn Hunt Meeting, and wound up with a second for the Westminster Handicap Hurdles, of 48 soys, at tho Southwell Hunt Meeting. Surely no Grand National winner evar had a- more unpretentious record ! The honours of the race rest, of course, with the French horses Trianon 111. and Lutteur 111., and more particularly the latter, who carried 12.6. Whilst running out in a' paddock at Wariganui last week, Dorando injured one of his feet. His owner has been obligee^ to spell him, but hopes to set him going again shortly. Mr. Duncan Fraser was , asked last week to put a price on Square Deal, but replied that he did not wish to pa-rt with tlie, colt, whom,, he intends eventually to use for stud purposes, The death is announced of Mr. Qt. D, Greenwood's mare Armlet, who met her end at Hani, Riccarton, on Thursday. She was bred at the Wellington Park Stud in 1905, ajid sold oil 30th December as a foal, together with her dam Armilla, to Mr. J. F. Reid for 310 guineas. At the sale of the Elderslie yearlings in 1906 Mr. George G. Stead purchased her for 150 guineas, and the late sportsman never made a much better bargain. She made her first appearance under silk in the Breeders' Plate at Randwick, in which she finished second, and at her next attempt she won the Gimcrack Stakes. Being Drought back to New Zealand she won the Welcome Stakes and Juvenile Plate at Riccarton, and during her first season on the Turf her winnings amounted to £2160. The following year she was successful in the Juvenile Plate and Randolph Handicap at Riccarton, the Royal Stakes at Ellerslie, the Great Easter Handicap and the Ten/pleton Handicap, in which she carried 9st 4lb and easily beat Petrovna 7st 741b, Los Angeles Bst '91b, Gold Thread Bst 51b, and six others, her winnings as a three-year-old amounting to £2145. Next season she annexed tho W.R.C. Metropolitan Handicap, the Jackson Stakes, the C'.J.C. Challenge Stakes, and the Thompson Handicap, worth collectively £1690, after which she was retired to the stud. At the time of her death, which was attributed to kidney troubles, she had a colt foal at foot by Danube, and was 4n foal to the same sire. After being operated upon, the Charlemagne 11. -Shepherdess colt purchased by Messrs. N. and E. Riddiford at the sale 'of tlie Waikanae yearlings, became in rather a bad way, and before he had regained his strength he contracted strangles. This proved his undoing, and he died on Friday. In reference to Charleville's success in the Rosehill Cup, tho Auckland writer, Phaeton, remarks : —"Though he will bo claimed as Australiau-bred he was got in Maoriland^ where his dam, La Gloria, first Baw the light. Som« five years back the Wellington Btudmaster, Mr. I. G. Duncan, sent a number of brood mares across to Australia to be offered by auction. La Gloria, in foal to Charlemagne 1I. ; was amongst tho number, and at 200 guineas sho felt to the bid of Mr. H. R. Deiii&on. Charleville is the result of the mating of Charlemagne 11. and La Gloria. In his early career Charloville proved of no account, and tiie astute Isaac Earnshaw allowed him to leave his stable. Taken to the country, Charleville soon earned fame, seven successive victories going down to his credit^ a win under the steadier of 13st 51b being one of the remarkable feats for, which he was leponsible. La Gloria, who claimed halftister to the stout-hearted Nonetto. will be best remembered by Aucklanders for her victory in tho Great Northern Guineas of 1899, which event stie won ; in the colours of Mr. J. T. Ryan." There's no "heavy going" with one of O'Connor and Tydeman'a chronographs. Sweet and smooth they run— dead on lime to the tick. From 35s at The Jewellers, Palmerston North.— Advt.