TROTTING NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18188, 22 June 1927, Page 2

TROTTING NOTES.

( Mr W. J. Hopkins, the treasurer of the New Zealand Trotting Association, was present on the first day of the Auckland Trotting Club's meeting. Mr Hopkins is on his way to Australia for a holiday. s£ sjs * The trotter Napland, who has not been racing well of late, was going well in the Campbell Handicap, when he got into trouble through Silk Thread falling and practically had to be pulled up. * :je jfs The Auckland trainer, C. F. Jones, who drove the pacer Mars in his race on the first day at the Auckland Trotting Club’s meeting, when he finished second to Loch Moigh in the first race and won the mile and a quarter event, has had a unique experience this season. He has taken part in six races, winning five, his second last Saturday being the only time he had not been successful.

The action of the Auckland Trotting Club in its attempt to reduce the size of the field in the Mangere Handicap on Saturday proved very satisfactory. Ihe club, finding so many horses in the limit, decided to make the draw for positions, the day prior to the races. Any owner dissatisfied with the position drawn could scratch his horse and the club decided to refund nomination and acceptance money. There was an original acceptance of thirty-one, but eight pulled out and this greatly assisted, as the field went away in good line and there was no accident in the * * * *■

When W. Orange landed Betty Moko a winner in the Stewards’ Handicap, at the Auckland Trotting Club’s meeting last Saturday, after a very close finish with The Tartar, she was accorded a fine reception. Orange is one of the veterans of the trotting sport, with which he has been associated for fortyfive years. He rode his first winner when he was fourteen years of age, and he has been a resident of Auckland for twenty-two years.

For the 72 trotting races decided in Southland during the season just finished the sum of £10,839 was given in stakes, £6300 of it being given by the Invercargill, Gore, Winton and Wyndham Trotting Clubs, and the balance by the racing clubs. The totalisator investments on the 72 races amounted to £128,811 10s, as compared with £125,277 10s in the 1925-26 season.

Tho “Horse Review,” a journal devoted to light harness racing in America and published in Chicago, takes a:: the subject of its leading article on May 11 the trotting meeting held at Addington as part of the entertainment of the Duke of York. In reality it is more a eulogy of Great Bingen and his fine effort of winning in 4min 21sec over two miles. The American journal makes one error in assuming that the Addington track, on which Great Bingen made his record, is a grass one. In point of fact, it is what the Americans call a dirt track. The “Review” has the following amongst other things to say:—ln the past the

“Review’” has several times contained articles and items about Great Bingen, as that horse has been for three seasons one of the premier harness performers of the Antipodes. lie has been started many times during that period, and has placed to his credit the grandest series of victories, at all distances up to tw’o miles, ever scored in that part of the w’orld. Nor was his performance in the York Handicap his greatest effort at the distance, as in a losing race he has taken a “placed” record of 4min 19 2-ssec for two miles; but, viewed from any standpoint, his feat of March 15 was a superb one. Great Bingen is owned by Mr J. R. M’Kenzie, and was driven by D. Withers. He is a large, finely-formed dark brown stallion, and his breeding is of especial interest to American reinsmen. The time was 4min 21sec, which established a new world’s race record for pacers at two miles. The American two-mile record for pacers is 4min 17sec, made in 1903, against time, behind a pace-maker, by Dan Patch, lmin 55isec. The next best American performances, by pacers, are the 4min 19isec of Chehalis, 2min 4*sec, and the 4min 225 sec of W.W.P., 2min sisec, both also against time. Racing at two miles was discontinued in America, save for a few special occasions, nearly fifty .years ago, and the race record at this distance, pacing, still stands where Defiance and Longfellow placed it (in a dead-heat) in 1872. The world’s two-mile record, also against time, is, of course, the 4min lOisec, trotting, of Peter Manning, made in 1925. The maternal ancestry of Great Bingen is also interesting, for not only is his dam a daughter of the phenomenal progenitor Peter the Great (‘2min 74sec) ; she runs back, in the direct maternal line, to old Lady Thorne Junior#, the dam of Santa Claus (2min one of the fastest trotting stallions of the ’eighties, and later the sire of Sidney (2min 195 sec), whose son, Sidney Dillon, sired Lon Dillon (lmin 58d sec), the first two-minute trotter. We fancy that few- American pacing stallions would care to try to duplicate the feat of Great Bingen over a grass track. He must be a horse of intense speed, strength, and courage, and wonderful soundness. His Antipodean admirers believe that over an American “parlour” track he would beat two minutes; and that, it will be granted, is no unreasonable claim.