SURPRISE BY NIGHTLASS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1937, Page 13

SURPRISE BY NIGHTLASS

The big surprise of the meeting was foisned on racegoers in the Moroa Hack Handicap when Nightlass skittled a useful field of hack milers. It was an even bigger surprise that she did not pay more thlan ordinary double figures, for she had no form whatever of any account, and had gone indifferently on the first day; but her name was apparently familiar to many. There was no fluke about the win. Nightlass was soon fourth in the running, and after going three furlongs she moved past Helen Ford and Day Dress into second place behind Earl I Colossus. Then at the three furlongs she took charge, and she never showed any sign of quitting in the straight. It is fifteen months since she won a maiden event at Foxton. She is a four-year-old daughter of Nightmarch and the Sunny Lake mare Matata, dam also of Custos, and she carries the jacket of Mrs. W. H. Ballinger, formerly so well known on Dominion race tracks while the late Mr. Ballinger was alive., Earl Colossus, ridden into the ground early, was still capable of coming again near the post and taking second money off Lacquer. He is a most unlucky gelding still to be a maiden. Helen Fbrd, pushing up on the fence, alsc- cut out Lacquer, who might not have faded thus if she had not been out on the track all the way. Day Dress never improved, and the favourite Cricket had a bad passage on the fence, a position he has never liked. It was the first and only win at the meeting for Trentham stables; and it was; the hazard of fortune that S. Wilson, who rode her, should have got off the George representative (Cricket) in this, event.