LIKELY CUP CHANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 25

LIKELY CUP CHANCE

PALANTUA SHOULD STAY

Palantua put up a strong finishing effort to win the Spring Handicap attractively at Gore last Tuesday, and as her New Zealand Cup ■ preparation looks like being nicely timed she may be one of the hardest opponents for Polydora to settle nest week. It will be remembered that she finished with a dazzling burst of speed to win tho inilo and a quarter Islington Handicap at Riccarton in August, and repetition of that effort at the end of the Cup trip would find few able to withstand her, ...'.. ' I'alantua, now four years old, did her early racing, like her dam (Mantua), over sprint courses, but last winter she showed that she could also run a mile easily, and irr August she scored at one and a quarter miles at firet time of asking, and was going away from useful performers at the finish. She is bred along sound staying lines, for not only is she a daughter of Mautua, a Solferino mare who comes from the same family as St. Hippo, a New Zealand Cup winner, but she is by the Polymelus horse Paladin, who has already had a New Zealand Cup winner m Chide. Bred in this way, she may stay any journey. ■ Mantua herself, though by Solferino, \Vas better known as a sprinter and a miler, but she was a hardy little mare who might have gone a journey successfully if she had been tried earlier in her career. It was as a seven-year-old that she was prepared for the New Zealand Cup, and although she failed in that race she was beaten only by Limelight in tho Metropolitan Handicap, 11/.:I 1/.: miles, then run on.the second day of the meeting. The previous February she had won tho l'^-mile Midsummer Handicap at Riccarton, but it was a moderate field of half a dozen, and she was in with only 7.9. ' ' . Tho family to which Palantua and Mantua belong has been most versatile with its olfspring.i and a brief glance at its record will suffice to show that it is still producing horses of the best class. Mantua (who herself won 23 races and over £7000 in stakes) was a granddaughter of Rosella, who, 'besides being a great performer over all distances (including wins in the A.R.C. Handicap, VA 'miles, A.R.C. Easter, and A.R.C. Railway), was the dam of Red Plume (dam-of the Wellington and Brisbane Cup winner Bunting) and the grandam of Rosellate (dam of- Teuterden, Richborough, etc), Solfanello (C.J.C. Stewards'), and Roseday (Dunedin Cup, A.R.C. Handicap, and A.R.C. Easter), as well as a half-sister to Vicereine (dam of Gold Tinge, Pin Money, etc.). Such is the class of the comparatively recent winning blood produced by this very successful family, and certainly little better showing could be desired on paper. Palantua, it may be worth noting in conclusion, is being trained at Wipgatui by P. Shaw,'who also handled Mantua, so she will have, all the benefit of this trainer's experience with her clam. She is evidently a very solid type of mare with a good finishing run, and there are more unlikely things that may happen than that she will pilot nest week's Cup field home.. \ .