EPIGRAM AND THE CUP

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

EPIGRAM AND THE CUP

In recent years three-year-olds have very rarely contested tho New Zealand Cup, and for the last winner of the Rie•earton two-milcr one has to trace the record back to 1014, when Indigo, carrying G. 12 (olb penalty), dead-heated with Warstep. Now Indigo, though a good stayer, was not a champion, as bis subsequent record proved, and it is one of the wonders of recent Cup history that so few owners of likely staying three-year-olds have since taken on the Cup. In Australia the three-year-old stars are regularly the top-liners for the Melbourne Cup.- • *■ ■ One of the reasons for this absence of recent three-year-old competition in the New Zealand Cup is undoubtedly the fact that the race is run prior to the Derby; and another reason is probably that there is such little opportunity in the Dominion for trying out a three-year-old as a stayer prior to the Cup Meeting, or even of mapping otit a satisfactory programme of preparatory racing. For a change this year, however, it is likely that there will be two three-year-old colts starting in next Saturday's race, Southdown and Epigram, and. each now looks to hold a very reasonable prospect of succeeding. It is the intention here to take a short estimate of Epigram's chance, particularly as it has been so enhanced by his brilliant gallop over VA »miles at Trentham this morning. Near the end of this trial he galloped clean away rium. Bettws-y----coed, who had picked him up at the mile, and, running 2min 9sec, he was going almost better at the post than he was at any other par.t. Epigram is a definite Cup starter now, and he will be ridden by W. E. Pine, lie is weighted at the minimum, which is 61b below weight-for-age, and as he goes like a colt who will stay he may prove a very hard horse to hold out at the eiid of next week's two-miler. / The breeding of this colt certainly suggests that he should lack nothing in the way of stamina. He is by Pombal, a halfbrother to Limond, and he is from the Limond mare Episode, a daughter of Homage, one of Eulogy's Absurd progeny. ,•••■■ A notable feature of this pedigree is his inbreeding to Lindal in the second and third removes. Here is a case not only of giving the sire (Pombal) back the best blood of his dam (Lindal), according to the Bruce Lowe rule, but of actually giving him back the dam's full blood, as Episode's sire LimoDd is no other than another son of Lindal. Such inbreeding, if it should result in a nick of the best ! strain's, .as it looks'there may be with Epigram, is liable to produce a horse of the very'first class. Not only is there sucli : close inbreeding, but Epigram, though by a sire whose stock to date have been disappointing, is from one of .the best female families in the present New Zealand Stud Book. This is the highly successful Eulogy family. Epigram's dam, Episode, was the best two-year-old of her- year (1027-28), winning the Great Northern Champagne Stakes, the Manawatu Sires' Produce Stakes, and three' other races in eight starts, but she was delicate and did not stand up to. training. Her younger fullbrother Honour won. the Derby two years later. Epigram's grandam, Homage, had herself a very brief racing career, but she was a full-sister to Humbug, Epitaph, and Eulajie, and a. half-sister to Commendation, Praise, and Pennon, so that her blood is the best. Homage's being by Absurd is the only possible weak unit in Epigram's'pedigree, but Absurd is in the third remove, and the Absurd brilliance may provide just the right offset for the staying blood of Pombal and Limond. Moreover it may be noted that although Pombal has not been the success expected at the stud, he is possibly a stouter staying sire on breeding than Limond, for ho comes from one of the best Bend Or lines (Pommern-Polymelus-Cyllene-Bona Vista). Bend Or dominates in the pedigree of Pombal, for Lindal's dam is by Bend Or's son Kendal, and it comes in attain very strongly through Liudal in liiiiTam's pedigree; in which Limond provides a rather much needed .outcross to St. Simon, the more particularly as Eulogy herself is in the Bend Or male line. . With such a pedigree, so full of Bend Or blood, Epigram should certainly stay, if he is going to do anything at all out of the ordinary, and his owner-trainer J. McLaughlin is very confident he will be on hand at the end of next week's Cup.. He has had a solid preparation, and he has gone five excellent races at his "last five starts, with two wins included and never out of a place; so that he should lack nothing on the score of fitness. He is indeed just the type of three-year-old who may start the ball rolling again tor horses of the age in the Cup, after |a lapse of nearly a score of years since Indigo, and a longer lapse, of nearly 30. years back to , Nootuiform, the last straight-out three-year-old winner of the Cup.