WORLD’S FASTEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1028, 19 July 1930, Page 12

WORLD’S FASTEST

PHAR LAP AND THE MELBOURNE CUP PAQUITO’S CHANCE FAVOURED j Australian bookmakers have com© in for a great deal of criticism on account j of the shortness of the price they are j offering against Phar Lap in the two- ■ Cup doubles and straight-out for the Melbourne Cup. Nobody, however, has gone so far as to declare any one horse to be the probable conqueror of the mighty Night Raid gelding. The weight-for-age scale has been applied to the handicaps, and it has been deduced that Phar Lap, at 9.12 has been rated too highly. And this is the gelding which, as a three-year-old, carried 9.5 to an easy victory in the King’s Cup at Adelaide. Freak Galloper Certainly, there is a vast difference between the Adelaide and Melbourne Cups, but Phar Lap proved himself so vastly superior to all his rivals in the autumn that there is justification for j the claim that he is a freak galloper—the greatest horse to have graced an ! Ausralian track. In such fashion did he account for all his rivals in his races this year that there is no saying that Phar Lap is not the world’s fastest. Although he is “a bit on the leg,’ performances indicate that Phar Lap does not mind weight, and his brilliant success over the two and a-quarter miles of the A.J.C. Plate proved his ability as a stayer. Paquito’s Prospects Of the other Melbourne Cup candidates none appeals more strongly than Paquito, but this gelding has backers thinking because of his engagements in the Metropolitan and Caulfield Cup. A win in either of the earlier races would bring about a rehandicapping of the New Zealander for the big V.R.C event, and that would prejudice his chance. There does not appear to be a better handicapped horse in any of the three distance handicaps of the spring than Mr. Knight’s Thurnham gelding. He has 8.9. That Paquito will contest the Metropolitan is fairly certain, in the event of his making the trip across the Tas man. His owner and trainer. Fred Jones, are not in the habit of “chacing shadows,” and the Metropolitan is a £ 6,000 race.