GOOD RACING GELDINGS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1410, 3 May 1917, Page 9

GOOD RACING GELDINGS.

In the Dominion we have just now a lot of good ge’ding racehorses of varying ages, and we have had many dur’ng the past four decades, and some even before that, whose names crop up on occasions. The “Australasian,” when referring to the Australian J.C. autumn meeting, thus interestingly deals with the subject of geldings:—The late Austin Saqui owned an old New Warrior gelding named Warrior, who ■won the Melbourne Cup of 1869, and afterwards held his own at weight for age, but we think that since Paul Pry (also trained by Scob’e), Green Cap is the

only gelding to win the two longer distance weight-for-age races at Randwick. Paul Pry won the Spring Stakes, Craven Plate, Wycombe Stakes, and Randwick Plate, at the 1900 spring meeting. Revenue was about to become a we ght-for-age winner of consequence when he came to grief in the Australian Cup, and we have had such geldings as Mata, Battalion, The Gra'ter, Paris, Bungebah, The Parisian, and Highborn in fa’rly recent years; while further back many will remember Strop and Nimblefoot; but Green Cap has done something which no gelding has done n recenc years. And, moreover, it has often been pointed out by Mr. Allison, the English writer most in touch with Australian racing, that in the days of Wallace, Aurum, Bobadil and others we tr ed our horses rather hardly in running them on every day of a four days’ meeting. Green Cap is English, and he ran four times at the A.J.C. meeting, the total distance be ng eight and a-half miles. He could, we have no doubt, have gone racing again this week, and most people think he should have won every time he started at Randwick. But the opposition to him was not strong. The best three-year-olds were not against h : m. Others out of the way were Patrobas, Bursar, Cetigne, and Shepherd King, while Lavendo and Carlita were quite out of form. Looked at from any point o" view, there was no strikingly good horse at Randw’ck, unless it was Thrice, for whom 5000 guineas was genuinely offered before the meeting began.