PATIENT HANDLING TELLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 12

PATIENT HANDLING TELLS

Spiral added his name to the list of Manawatu Cup winners with a worthily-achieved victory from in behind the leading section. The "Western Australian rider E. Peck handled him with commendable patience, reserving his call till on the home stretch, and he was rewarded with a splendid response from the horse when he moved him out on the track entering the straight and asked him to challenge. He caught Tiger Gain, who was attempting an end-to-end win, in the last hundred yards and beat him home by a long neck. Spiral thus reversed tables on Tiger Gain, who had beaten him into second place at Feilding a month earlier when the pair were having their last previous start. Always a good horse, Spiral has had a rather up and down career, but he is- still capable of staging returns to his best. Last season he took successfully for a time to sprinting, but in the autumn he was winning again over- a distance on the Awapuni course. Spiral gave his breeder-owner, Mr. G. M. Currie, his first success in the Manawatu Cup, and Mr. Currie must now be well satisfied that he decided on racing the horse at Awapuni in preference to at Ellerslie. He is the third Limond winner of the race, the two prior victors having been Lady Desmond (1927) and Tout le Monde (1934), Tiger Gain, the winner three years ago in different interests, made a' bold effort to set his own pace out in front all the way. He all but succeeded, too, for he had his nearest attendants well settled on reaching the straight; but he then found himself just unable to withstand a late claim from a horse who has won in the best company. He was a little unlucky not to be able to record his second success after having been brought back to such excellent form again. One Whetu, who moved sore on going out, found the track to his liking with the sting out of it; for, after racing up fast,rqund the field from the half-mile, he still kept going on the home run to hold Limbohm and Lowenbcrg out of third money—worth £60. Limbohm,' another sore horse, ran a very creditable race for fourth, after being squeezed out at the start, as it v/as his- first time out since he returned from Sydney last winter. Lowenberg, unhappily favoured in the position he was forced into early, may have been one of the unlucky runners.