NOTES AND COMMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 51, 28 August 1925, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

|BY "VEDETTE")

Nominations for the Dannevirka and Otaki Spring Meetings close, to-nlgb*.. Entries for the Wellington Racing Club's classic events will be taken up to Friday next. Avondale .Cup weights ere due on Monday. Everything points to the North Taranaki Hunt Meeting to-morrow at New Plymouth being a. success. Some of the tried-handicap horses are due to maku their first appearance for the season, while the reappearance of the younger horse 3 will add interest to the proceedings. Horses who have raced -through the winter should have an advantage, but possibly it may be unwise to discard altogether some of the others who are trained by men who have b happy knack of producing their liorse3 well forward in condition very early in the season. Most interest in the Hunt Cup will be centred in Te Toa, who has won for two years in succession. He is reported to have 'done well for P.. Johnson, but Ah Fu and Koller should make him carry his 12.0 The distance of the Stratford Handicap, six furlongs, will be against Muraahi, while it is also hardly far enough for Income, llational has a. big load in 11.9, but has been kept going through the winter. He has not Taced much, however, for his only attempt over hurdles was a complete fiasco.. The Banker and Halgina represent 0. Cox's stable, but race in different interests. The selected one should show irp well. Eafa and Oration are from E. George* stable, Oration in particular having some very smart two-year-old iorm. If he is really ready, he reads a* well as anything. Shut Eye seems to te racing better since being ridden in behind in tlie early part of his raoos. Oration, Cox's selected, or Shut Eye should do best.

King Amans seems exceptionally wellplaced in the Lepperton Hunters' Hurdles. Others who take the eye throughout the day are Puawhato, All Wind, Te Monanui, Star Area, Fire Brigade, and Willow Wai. The secretary of the Racing Conference has circularised all racing and hunt clubs calling upon them to use the uniform hurdles. Hurdles with feet attached are not to be used, and panels are to be tied securely to stakes of strong timber. Iron spikes in uae on 6ome courses are a menace to both horses and riders. The two one-day fixtures in Auckland recently, the Pakuranga Hunt Meeting and the Auckland Trotting Club's -Meeting, showed the large, amount of money in the North which finds its; way into the totalisator. At Ellerslie £56,106 was invested on eight racea, while at Alexandra Park the total for seven races was £50,377. The average per race was higher at the trotting meeting.' At Trentham for two days the total was only £75,849, or only about £19,700 more than, on the single day at Elleralie. The Otago Hunt Meeting next Saturday at Wingatui is expected to provide a satisfactory opening of the rac-ing-season in the far South. Nearly all the horses engaged are from the local stables. . According to Southern exchanges, T. Metcalf is making a satisfactory recovery from the result of the accident which left him with a broken leg, but it will be some time before he will be fit to ride again. The Waipa Racing Club showed a profit on ita workings last year of £1400. According to a Northern writer, the Waikato Hunt Club has not yet received permission to race on the Waikato Trotting Olub's course at Claudelands, W. Hawthorne has had his team reduced very considerably, and at present all he has in work are Standard and four two-year-olds. F. Tilley's horses are tiained privately at Fordell, bo not a great deal is known about them, but good reports are being circulated about Ohui, the three-year-old sister to Tamatete and company. She is still a Trial Plater. Lysander, the two-year-old brother to Motley, is said to be a very promising youngster. He is not expected to race until the Wellesley Stakes at Trentham in October. R. Hatch has heen rea-ppointed starter for the Reefton Jockey Club. Arpent, who early last season showed a good deal of promise, and who is now owned arid trained in Otago, is reported to bs Bprinting very well at Wingatui. A southern writer states that the Dunedin Cup' this year will carry a stake of 1500 soys., and that the Dunedin Jockey Club intends to apply for permission to extend the meeting over three days. The stakes at the summer and autumn meetings are to be increased by 2000 soys, it being the ambition of the club to make the meetings good attractions during the time the big exhibition is in progress. , Two ex-North Islanders now trained at Wingatui in Bonena and Happy Days are reported bright and well. It was intended to school Happy Days over hurdles, but the project lias been abandoned for the time being. Benmure and Bon March are due to make their reappearance at Marton, but tho former mjght do better later on when the tracks are firmer. A Wellington owner is negotiating for the purchase of Ngawati, the two-year-old, b" Autumn from Blue Sea, but so far no business has resulted. Surveyor's first winner is reported from Ascot, Victoria, in Tripod, a three-year-old bred by Mr. W. G. Stead. Creat is the stamina of some of the "grassfed" racehorses you see out back, states a "Bulletin" writer. After being hacked about for a couple of months and hard fed, they are paddocked for a month (sometimes where the herbage is tough and unnourishing), and then intensively trained, after a fashion, on corn for a couple of weeks. On this regimen, some of them will gallop half v mile- on a barbarous track with welter weights in 52 or 53 seconds, and do it three time 3in an afternoon. If it^ is a two-day meeting, they will repeat the performance on the second afternoon, having been tied up to a tree in the saddling paddock in between, and obliged to stand tucked up and sleepless in v stall overnight. At Augathella. (W.Q.) recently, I saw graSsfeds at it for four days running, and in the last race of the meeting five of them finished abreast, with their straight-backed jockeys riding hell-for-leather to the last stride. For courage and endurance your pampered aristocrats are not in it with many backcountry prads whose parentago is too | doubtful to be recorded in stud-books. Tho way that. Mr. "Jimmy" Roths-child-became possessed of the winner of tlie Grand Prix de Paris, La Reine Lumiere, reads almost lfka an Arabian flight's romance, layi an exchange a» J

he had never seen the mare, and telephoned to his coramissionnaire to go up to 200,000 francs at the Decazes sale of horses in training on the previous Tuesday, but the . commissionnaire mistook what he said on the telephone for 300,000 francs, and had it not been for this mistake Mr. Rothschild would, more likely than not, have become possessed of the animal at the lower figure, as this was the reserve, and in giving 300,000 francs he had in addition to pay 15 per cent, expenses on the sale price, which brought the cost up to about £3400 in Eng-Jish money. However, he won double that sum in stakes alone. Mr. Rothschild is reputed, on reliable authority to have had a thousand louis on the horsa to win, which would show him a profit of something like £20,000 in addition io the stakes. He took this bet with a well-known Greek bookmaker, and in consequence of it not going into the mutuels, the price of the winner was very much longer than it otherwise would have been. How must the Due Decazes feel about the matter? Naturally, he got a good price for his mare,, who had only run fourth behind Aquatinte 11. in the French Oaks, but she was a little unfortunate in that race, without ever having a prospect of actually winning.