Racing and trotting I

Press, 14 April 1979, Page 21

Racing and trotting I

i Special correspondent • Auckland

Neither the pace that might turn in a record nor recent form are main considerations when picking the winner of the Easter Handicap at Ellerslie today. The question now, almost entirely, is which will best manage the heavy footing. The wettest weather of the year has already caused the withdrawal of Grey Way from the big race and if the remarks of the trainer G. O. Mudgway last week-end were anything to go by Silver Boy must be a doubtful starter. Silver Boy, so Mudgway said at Tauranga, would run only if the track remained firm. And he is the second top weight. The field to start with for

the Easter, a $40,000 1600 m event was of ordinary quality. certainly it could not afford the loss of any from the top half. Many of the horses are unknown quantities on the ground now, certain having never attempted such going. Others are well known as having tried and failed. A group which have already been successful or have raced prominently on very wet tracks are Better Be Good, Raplane, Glister, i Baccalla and River Queen. Luck Roona and Stipulwin have been winners in the wet, and at Ellerslie, but there is a doubt whether they will strip quite ready for a task such as this. Better Be Good won an : intermediate 1400 m race at! Ellerslie near the start ofi ■ last season with the track sol

heavy that the winning time was Imin 32s and a fraction, some eight or nine seconds slower than they go on top of the ground. Glister claims a last-start win over 1600 m on heavy going at Awapuni — by four lengths and a half. Communique was a star of last winter and included the A.R.C. Cornwall Handicap in his successes. Raplane, just two starts back, ran away with an intermediate 1600 m event at Te Awamutu, on a sloppy track and by 10 lengths. Baccalla, as a visitor from Foxton, is specially interesting. In some doubt might be the way she takes to the right-handed Ellerslie way around. Judging by her form i of last winter she will handle I the going as well as any and, (perhaps, a good deal better (than most.

A six-year-old, by Resurgent, Baccalla is in fair form too, having finished second in her last attempt, a 1400 m race at Awapuni on March 24. That was her first race after a lay-off. The mere fact of her being brought to Ellerslie suggests Baccalla made all the expected improvement with her race at Awapuni. Last midwinter she ran a succession of very good middle distances, once or twice beaten only narrowly. Glister has had five nicelyspaced races since late January when he came back after a short let-up. Communique has had three starts, for second placings in the first two, then unplaced in a middle distance at Tauranga, where the track was too firm and the pace too quick for his liking. Glister and Communique are five-year-olds, both trained by R. C. Verner who, through his association with Sleepy Fox, is specially fond of any chance to win the Easter. His father, T. F. Verner, prepared Sleepy Fox for his remarkable four successive wins during the 1940 s and he has won it himself once, with Turfcutter in 1974. Raplane is from another leading stable, that of D. J. O’Sullivan at Matamata. A good light-weight, too, is Shahman, which will be produced by F. T. Ritchie, who operates a stable at Ellerslie. Shahman, one of four three-year-olds in the Easter — Springtide, Raplane and Regal Edition are the others — will notch his fourth success in a row if he leads them in, having cleared intermediate with a hat-trick of good, game wins.

It is a fair while since the Easter Handicap was run on anything but a firm track. The winners of the last five all broke 1 min 36s for the 1600 m and four went quicker than Imin 355. The last time the race was run on heavy ground was in 1973 when Nordic Star, even though a runaway winner, required Imin 43s for the then one mile course.

Besides the Easter, attractions will be the Great Northern Champagne Stakes, the Diana Stakes and the second leg of the T.A.B. double, the President’s Handicap. All three races are open, the more so because of the heavy ground.