GRAY CHANGED HIS MIND AFTER HE LEFT BIRDCAGE ON CYLINDER

NZ Truth, Issue 1301, 20 November 1930, Page 13

GRAY CHANGED HIS MIND AFTER HE LEFT BIRDCAGE ON CYLINDER

SAID HE WANTED PACE ON

First Six Was Run To Accompaniment Of The Dead March!

SPRINT HOME SAW TACTICS SUCCEED

ginuiHiiiiilMHmHitiiiHiiiiiHHiiMiiiiiuiiinitiiiiiiiuiiniiiHMiHiiiHniiMiiiiiniiiiHniniiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiinimniiiiniiniiiHiiiuiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiii |j It is always the way; the crowd will yell its head off 1 when a ohampion is beaten. And at Riccarton last | Saturday the outer had something to make a noise about.

MIGHTMARCH was beaten m, , the I 11 V- Stead Gold Cup, and, though ninety per cent, present felt m their i own. hearts that the better horse lost, that did not prevent them from roaring their delight at his defeat. ' Nightmarch was beaten m a battle i of tatftics,- for Gray, on Cylinder, liter- ! ally and. figuratively, outgeneralled Reed.' V "V .■.'',' Tor days prior to the race Hee. reckoned he would win, whatever way ■ the race was run. , Let it be slow or he was confident of the^outcome. . .As a matter, of ;fact Qra^ wanted it fast, and he told trainer Jefferd if there was no pace he would go and make it himself. There was.no pace— it took them a tick- under a minute to run the first half mile— ;and with such dawdling Gray musty have altered his plans after he left the birdcage. Ellis, on Toxeuma, was the first to makeVup his mind that the trots had .ended the day before, and over at the six he went up and joined Nightmarch, and the, gait increased. It had; only taken lmin - 24 . l-ssec to get to the end of six. Hearse horses could not have- gone slower. Once into the straight Toxeuma was gone as. far as Nightmarch was concerned, arid Reed had a look round.; /He evidently came. to the conclusion that : there was \no danger, for he sat •down, content to look the part. Even when Gray came along' on the outside, with a furlong to go, he did not take it seriously, but when Gray gave Cylinder the works one hundred yards off the post, and the three-year-old jumped to a neck lead, Reed saw that he had let himself m for something. -. He pulled the bog on Nightmarch, hut he could not,, get into top m a stride arid, the^post was ever so near. Reed i was desperate with 7; the line a few strides off r '.an'd Nightmarch ; answered by flattening right out, but he was too late. At the; post he was a bare head to the bad, a stride past -it he was on

terms and then the next fraction m front "Fired away," was .the general summihg up, and there is no doubt that Reed took matters too easy after he had disposed of. Toxeuma, but the fact remains that Reed, decided on a sprint home, and was beaten m the brush. Generalship was what, won and Gray won through waiting to make his one effort, which, should' his mount an-

swer, would , make it . hard for Nightmarch to get going before it was, too late. ' Cylinder did not let him down. Gray, measured the spot to the inch —had: he gone two strides sooner he would have got at best a dead-heat and possibly a licking. Various reports, have given it out that Cylinder wore Nightmarch down, but this is contrary ■ to fact, and can only be taken as an effort to give all the honors * to the horse. . V Cylinder is entitled" to his : share, but it. was the brain 'of. Gray that enabled him to give Nightmarch, which ran the last half m 47 1-5 sec, a start, and a beating. . > "Truth" is quite convinced that with anybody else 'on Cylinder Nightmarch would have won the treble. . ■