MANY SPRINT UPSETS.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 61, 14 March 1939, Page 13

MANY SPRINT UPSETS.

While the Thompson issue is thus quite open, many will believe that the winner is more easily to be found in the Railway Handicap. However, it is the rule rather than the exception at Trentham that form works out much as expected in the longer handicap but it is a tricky guide in the ""sprint. Time and again there have been surprise results in the. open sixes, not only when fields are large but often when there are only six or eight runners. Though a stable double was completed, \when Laughing Lass won the Railway Handicap last year, this mare was t only third favourite on the win machine. It may be worth recalling that during the twelve years since the. Autumn Meeting was fixed in March,, instead of usually in April following the Easter racing, only four favourites (Cadland, Diatomous, Silver Streak, and Dungarvan) have been the winners, and only one second favourite (Golden Wings) and two third favourites (Cimabue and Laughing Lass) have been additionally successful, leaving outsiders to Score on five occasions in the period. With Silver Streak,.Dungarvan, and Laughing Lass the latest winners, however, form has been a rather truer index-in recent years. The favourite on Friday seems a foregone conclusion if Suleiman takes his place in the field, as now seems probable. Suleiman hap been accepted for only in this event. He won a double on the course eighteen months ago shortly after he had successfully opened his career at Avondale, and, returning to Trentham last March, he ran a great race for fourth from: an impossible marble in the Thompson Handicap, which Was sufficient explanation in itself why he. failed to justify the support that sent him out a hot favourite on the second day. At his only two. appearances this season he has been a winner, carrying 8.5 at Ellerslie in January and 9.0 at Te Aroha last month/when he scored pointlessly by three, lengths.