SUCCESS DESERVED

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 112, 14 May 1938, Page 22

SUCCESS DESERVED

HONEST COUNT WILLONYX

It is doubtful if any hprse at Wanganui on Thursday was more deserving t of his success /than Count Willonyx, ' who narrowly won the Grandstand • Steeplechase. This horse has been a • most consistent performer during the ' last two years, but the big end of the purse has only twice come his way in this period. Count Willonyx was having his twentieth start for the current term and on no less than ten occasions has he filled the role of runner-up, his seconds being registered in all departments of the game, but mainly over hurdles. Last season he failed to win a- race, but he was seven times in the money in seventeen starts. Two winters ago he was hunted and he won the Dannevirke Hunt Cup after a farcical contest in which all the other starters came to grief. In the same race last winter he was second to Sleepy, in his only race over country during the term. It was not till , he was a late five-

year-old that Count Willonyx made Ills race debut in a maiden event at Hastings. He then ran in the colours of his breeder, Mr. J, Spratt, of- Gisborne. Later he was taken over by Mr. H. L. Harker, tor whom he won the Dannevirke Hunt Cup; and about twelve months ago another change of possession found him passing to the Waipukurau trainer H. Dods, for whom he had raced with somewhat exasperating luck till recently. The change of fortune came at the Manawatu Meeting in March, when the gelding won the first day's hurdles from Hirangi and Iddo in the good time of 3min 13sec for the mite and three-quarters. That win followed* four consecutive seconds and Was an excuse for three subsequent unplaced efforts. But then the seconds started again, as he filled the post of Runner-up in the gentleman riders' race at Waipukurau (won ,by Passiori Fruit) and in the Waverley Steeplechase (won by Royal Fire) prior to his Thursday's win, his most important to date. Count Willonyx just scraped home at WanganUi, but he would have been most unlucky to lose. He jarred a joint at the last fence, 'and, according to his rider, L Rohloff, he had to be nursed down the final furlong, with the kicks that took him to victory reserved till the last fifty yards. He was limping on his return to the enclosure, but he has been similarly affected before without the effects lasting for.long. As he is now nine years old, Count Willonyx has had only four seasons of racing ,and he should therefore begood for niore. He is a wiry chestnut son of the Willonyx horse Prince Willonyx (sire of Town Major and several other useful performers, particularly on the East Coast), and his dam is the All Black—Mongonui mare Mungakino, the dam also of Lord Willonyx, | whom the late C. Morse raced with! success, and of Maori Song, a northern sprinter who will be remembered for his double success at Trentham last winter. Mongonui was a daughter of the great Carbine, the family having been brought over from Australia in the early years of the century. On looks alone one would not expect any great deeds from Count Willonyx as a steeplechaser, as he is cast on very low lines. Yet quite a number of good 'chasers have been built this way, and it is a characteristic of them that they are very clever on their legs. Count Willonyx rarely makes a mistake of any sort, though he never jumps a fence with more than the minimum of clearance, and if they are brushes he skims through the top of them. He was ridden in behind for two-thirds of Thursday's trip with the special object of seeing how he would come home from that position. When sent along, he gathered in the leaders with surprising ease and he had charge before reaching the second-last fence.