OTAGO.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 917, 3 October 1907, Page 7

OTAGO.

D.J.C. Spring Meeting—Dunedin Stakes Inaugurated for 1908—Heorthen—Lncrece’s Dead Heat Hits Local Books Hard—Punters Fall on ah Bed at Wanganui.

DUNEDIN, October 2. The handicaps have been issued for the first day of the D.J.C. Spring Meeting, and if Idealist makes the journey South, he should be hard to beat in the principal race on the first day’s card. A progressive note was struck at the monthly meeting of the D.J.C. committee held last week when it was decided to have a well endowed two-year-old event at the Spring meeting of 1908. The new race is to be called the Dunedin Stakes, and is to have a 250 sovs. stake attached. Special weights, at which geldings are allowed the stereotyped 31b, and fillies 51bs, are the burden conditions; and the distance is wisely restricted to four furlongs. The inauguration of the new race calls to mind that we once had a nicely named and richly endowed w.f.a. (penalties and allowances) stake on our programme, but although it was born with quite a bag of gold tacked to its infantile pinny, by way of being the silver spoon in its mouth, it lived but three years, and the equine undertakers who dug its grave were Gold Medallist, Multiform, and Conqueror. It is just ten years ago since Gold Medallist and Multiform ran first and second in the D.J.C. Champagne Stakes, and came out again to occupy similar positions in the first Eclipse Stakes of 500 sovs., which was decided on the final day of the same

meeting. The Eclipse attracted a field of six in the year of its inauguration; but when Conqueror and Gold Medallist went out for the race of 1898 they were only opposed by Fulman and Visionary, and Mr Stead’s pair (coupled) started at 20 to 1 on. Dundas had previously downed Conqueror and Altair in the Champagne on the first day of the meeting, and followed up that win by defeating Altair in the City Stakes; but he was not in the Eclipse field, and Mr Stead’s representatives practically had matters their own way. Multiform was the winner of the third Eclipse, and he was opposed by Nihilist and Brisa. It was a good race, and its short life was never won by a bad horse. Multiform, a crack of cracks, assisted to lift and drop the curtain on it, and whether it will ever be reproduced again is too big a guess. Heorthen, the daughter of Phoebus Apollo and Hilda, who won the Geraldine Cup last week, was picked up as a yearling at a weeding out sale held by Mr G. G. Stead a couple of years ago, at the small price of 15 guineas. She cost Mr Stead 65 guineas at the Wellington Park sales, and it would appear that his first judgment was the best. Her dam Hilda, (Musket —Ouida) has been a producer of winners, and threw Antares, Fulmen, and Maude (the dam of Mahutonga), Hildebrand, a winner in Australia, is a brother to Heorthen. Lucrece’s dead heat, and its accompanying dividend of £lO 2s, was a shock to our local S.P. merchants; one laid chances (a good deal at full limit), and had to come up smiling with a nice sheaf of cheques on settling day. Considering the amount of money that was held about the Soult mare, her dividend was a bit astonishing. Local punters were stacking money on All Red as a dead sure thing for the Putiki Hack Handicap, run on the first day of the Wanganui meeting, but he failed to get in the money; and his success on the second day did not recoup the original loss. Big S.P. commissions were placed on the colt for each of his races, and the stay at home brigade were betting on “information received.”