ALF HILL .

NZ Truth, Issue 946, 12 January 1924, Page 11

ALF HILL .

/When Mantua led the field home m the Inverca?gilt Cup the demonstration of dejight from the crowd was a tribute both to the gameness of the little rnare^and to the popularity of her owner, Alf Hill. Right from his boyhood ,days the dapper iittle chap has been closely associated with turf happenings and he says there is nothing m life. he likes better than to see the multi-colored jackets of the jockeys Sweeping round the track and to hear the sound of flying hoofs m a punishing DnLsh. "Yes," he said, "a love of racing Js .what might be termed a family heirloom so far as. l am concerned "My uncle wa^s the first white j -jockey to- ride a winner at Waikouaiti, While my grandfather was a trainer." ! Alf held both a rider's and a trainer's license m his more youthful days and was attached to stables m Dunedin, Cfpre, and Oamaru. In the days when were licensed to bellow the odds on courses he took his stand on one of the pedastals and quickly gained a big clientele as a result of his scrupulously fair transactions. For a score of years his black- jacket, with purple crossed sashes has been seen on the track and one of the first horses he ever owned was Belligerent, with which he :up several stakes oh the goldfields circuit He has now a string of twelve, of which four--Red Admiral, Afatatiia, Twinkle and Orange Bitters are jumpers. As is only natural, Alf thinks hid little cup winner is queen of the stable and it should be mentioned that m her forty starts last season she was placed m exactly half Of them. ?' Linden is another I have a great fancy for; you can't beat a good stake -earner you know. Oh, yes, I've owned a trotter or two, but somehow that branch of the game has never appealed to me very much." Money has never stopped Alf from indulging his fancy as he proved when he Imported Eaton Bells. Apple Dighton. Olympia, and Courtly Rose from Australia. .The two first-named have already found the way to the winning post, but the others are at p-esent entIng the oats of Idleness. "Don't forget to say that any success I've experienced of recent years has been due to the efforts of my painstaking trainer, Fred Shaw." said Alf to the writer us he stepped from his luxuriously appointed billiard parlors into the blackness ot the night. ■ ■