TURF NEWS AND NOTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 November 1939, Page 2

TURF NEWS AND NOTES

CURRENT TOPICS FROM STABLE AND COURSE Wellington Club’s Centennial Cup WILL THE RESTRICTIONS WORK OUT RIGHT?

(BY

"CARBINE.”)

The Wellington Racing Club has attached certain conditions to its Centennial Cup with the idea of preventing the field from including horses which would have no real chance of winning and which would probably only block good horses from doing, so. The Club has restricted the race to horses that had won a race to the value of £350 or races of the collective value of £5OO. In other words, there is no place in the Wellington Centennial Cup for hacks. However, many keen followers of racing will doubtless hold the opinion that the restrictions will not solve the trouble. For instance, Capricious is barred from competing and her Riccarton Carnival record is such that'she looks the type required in the race. She is a stayer and is in form, and would doubtless have gone to the post one of the

favourites. By the time nominations are due there may be other desirable horses barred from competing. Then again if the field exceeds the safety number the position will become a ridiculous, if not an absolutely serious, one. A southern writer points out that a substantial sweepstake would have had a salutary effect in limiting the number of starters but the surent method would have been something on the lines of the special conditions attached to the Trotting Cup this year. The (officials of the club could, in this way, after the final acceptance, have reduced the field to twenty, or such other number as was decided on, by rejecting horses with no recent form. There may be no need to cut down the field, but under the condition as it stands the club has not found the way in which that object can be accomplished.

No Dreamers. Many successful bets in horse-racing have materialised out of dreams, but no one has yet related to any Melbourne or Sydney Pressman how he or she dreamed that Rivette would win both the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups this year. If he or she had dreamed that way a few months ago, the reward for a £1 investment on that ethereal intimation would have been £lO,OOO. When the first lists on the two Cups were issued in Melbourne the two Rivettes were quoted at that price. The longest odds, however, reported as having been laid was £5,000 to £2. Most other bookmakers did not actually lay longer than 1,000 to 1. One bookmaker reported after the Melbourne Cup that he had laid the double for between £ll,OOO and £12,000 and several others reported amounts ranging from £2,000 to £B,OOO. Still an Absentee.* Modern Way, who injured herself when working on the Hastings tracks on the eve of the last Napier Park meeting, is still an absentee from the training tracks. This is most unfortunate for her connections, as this Lord Quex mare was just coming right.

I A Useful Sort. Tracture, a useful-looking sort of a gelding by Tractor, in C. J. Stowe's stable, is at present working impressively on the Hastings tracks, but may not be asked to race until the H.B.J.C summer meeting. Hunter’s Eve, who has not been a frequent visitor to the tracks since racing at Bulls, was worked on the lead at Hastings on Monday. She is engaged at Otaki, but unless rain falls between now or Friday she will not make the trip. A Speedy Filly. According to southern reports Royal Consort, who recently won the two juvenile events at the Napier Park Racing Club’s spring meeting in runaway fashion, impressed as being a particularly smart youngster, likely to prove very difficult to beat short courses. Royal Consort, who is owned by Mr T. A. Duncan, and is trained by L. Jarvis at Marton, lacks nothing on the score of breeding, being by the Quantock horse Laughing Prince from Happy Hit, a mare by Leighton from the former smart sprinter Kinsem, who won good races a few years back.