RACING IN THE WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 3

RACING IN THE WAR

ITS IMPORTANCE REALISED. (From a London Correspondent.) War cannot kill racing. This week there has been interest in the Newmarket Town Plate—and for an unusual reason. A matter of 273 years ago King Charles 11. went down to Newmarket along with Nell Gwynne, and perhaps to please her, but ostensibly to mark his accession to the Throne, he founded the race and decreed that it should be run over the July course at Newmarket on the second Thursday in October “for ever.” And what is more, he made it a race for both men and women, and so it stands unique in the English racing calendar. A son of King Charles was the first Duke of Grafton, and one of the Duke’s descendants, the 20-year-old Lady Mary Rose Fitzroy, rode in the race this week. A clever horsewoman,. she is a granddaughter of the eighth Duke and sister of the ninth Duke, who was killed three years ago while competing in the Limerick International Motor Race. She rode Mr R. Taylor’s Simple Simon, and it would have been fitting if a descendant of , the founder had won. But, alas, she

was unplaced. Still, her sex triumphed, for the winner was Miss V. Bullock, a trainer’s daughter. Newmarket has had a loss this week, for Manna, the famous racehorse and stallion which won both the Derby and the Two Thousand Guineas in 1925, died as the result of a broken blood vessel, at the age of seventeen. For three days Mrs Morriss, the wife of, the owner, had been almost constantly beside the horse’s box.