PROMISE AS STEEPLECHASER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26769, 12 May 1948, Page 8

PROMISE AS STEEPLECHASER

The Wingatui trainer, H. A. Anderton, might well be described as a specialist with jumpers, among his more recent outstanding performers being Page’s Raid and Arabian Night. Included in his large active team for the approaching jumping season is Desert Trek, who shows promise of keeping his name well in the limelight. A six-year-old by Nightmarch from Lady Lizzie, Desert Trek last season won the June Hurdle Handicap at Wingatui and followed this up by winning the Winter Hurdles, of two mile and a-quarter at the Trentham meeting held in the following month, his margin at the post being eight lengths. Among those he beat were Prize Ririg, Foxstar, Good Armour and Mary Lee. This season he has been started nine times for one win, two seconds, one third, and two fourths, one of the fourths being in the Grand National Hurdles, with 10.5. At the Southland meeting last month he made a promising debut as a steeplechaser by running third to Kiltie and Ruling Moment in the Clifden Steeplechase under the handicap of his rider, L. Hare, losing his irons. A dyed-in-the-wool stayer, Desert Trek should be worth following during the winter, and it will occasion no surprise if he wins one of the Dominion’s big jumping events.