TE AROHA PUZZLES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1937, Page 13

TE AROHA PUZZLES

FLYING CHIEF AND TARO

Some of the handicapping in the Waitoa Handicap at the Te Aroha Meeting tomorrow is very difficult to understand. This event is for horses who have not won a race worth £75 or more to the winner at time of entry. Two of the field, Flying Chief and Taro, are winners, and yet they figure on the minimum, with several nonwinners asked to carry weight above the minimum!

| Indeed Flying Chief is remarkably handicapped at only 7.7. He had his first two starts as King Koroki, and at the second of them beat everything except King Tudor, who went on to win again at his next start and in better class. When having his third and only subsequent outing he raced under his changed name, and he led all the way to score easily. It was most impressive form and showed that he was something above ordinary maiden class. . . Now Flying Chief is treated as the most modest of maidens. If it were not that Taro had not been rehandicapped for his Woodville win, one could say he was' simply being grouped with maidens who had never shown the least sign of form. . . While Flying Chief graces the minimum, Haile Boy and Jack Tar, who have each also won a single event in a rather similar career, have been placed on 9.4 and .9.3 respectively, nearly 2 stone above the Taranaki gelding. Jack Tar and Haile Boy were the respective maiden winners at Rotorua a fortnight ago, and Jack Tar beat Haile Boy with a 71b concession on the first day, so now the dif-

ference is reduced to lib between them, apparently for Haile Boy's year seniority over Jack Tar, who is a three-year-old, like Flying Chief. The next on tomorrow's Waitoa list are Raepata, Racing Lady, and Very Glad, who have never been able to achieve better than mere minor places as yet. Incidentally, this trio are weighted above the three-year-old Tavern Song, who has already been a winrfer. Why, one might reasonably ask, should these pure novices have to concede weight to such a promising hack as Flying Chief? It is also a little puzzling that Taro should not have been rehandicapped for his end-to-end win at Woodville on Monday, for that was only his third start and it at least revealed possibilities about him. When Pirate King won his first race at Te Rapa last weekend, Mr. F. J. McManemin, the Te Aroha handicapper. did not hesitate to raise him 81b in the Waitoa, for which he has not accepted. Taro won his first race further afield, and so his form might have been overlooked.