ELLERSLIE ITEMS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1471, 4 July 1918, Page 11

ELLERSLIE ITEMS.

Auckland stables were fairly represented in the handicap events at the Wellington meeting, and a number of horses were being worked at Ellerslie with a view to taking part thereat up to the time the weights appeared. A number were racing at Gisborne, Napier Park or at Hastings, and some of them may go over from Hawke’s Bay. Before the weights were announced, E. J. Rae’s team, Moddite, Meltchikoff and Notability, witli Captain Lock as a schoolmaster, were sent away by rail, so as to arrive at Trentham early and do some schooling. They got delayed some days en route owing to a slip on the line. The trucks by the goods train on which they travelled were derailed, but fortunately the horse box was not, or there would perhaps have been more casualties to add to the already formidable list of the past few weeks.

Colonel Soult and Penniless are not to go to Wellington, neither will Platoon, who is in the same ownership as the first-named, or Bedford, who is in the same stable as all three, though in another interest. Colonel Soult has not won a race for 15 months, and the prospects of him doing so thus early over battens was not sufficiently inviting. Bedford too was thought to have quite plenty of poundage, though he was going nicely in his work. Roval Rufus will probably not make the 'trip south from what I have learned.