 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 1946
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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| Driver Doug Watts and Owner/Trainer Vic Leeming |
The contest for the NZ Trotting Cup, 1946, resembled a funeral march in B flat. It should have been a marathon. It wasn't. The bun rush that developed over the last half-mile, and the memorable photo-finish between Integrity and Josedale Grattan, came as poor compensation on top of the sit-down strike that was imminent for the first mile and a half. It just wasn't good enough for a stake of £7500. The basic constituent of harness racing is speed and stamina, but you will look in vain for either of these commodities in the sectional times for Saturday's race.
Without a doubt it was the worst stayers' Cup for years, because the void that occurred between Vesuvius
and Gold Bar yawns again. The king is indisposed - long live Gold Bar or his prototype. The Metropolitan Club was deserving of a better deal from the principal actors in what should be the Dominion's leading light-harness drama.
Integrity's victory was a gratuity for services rendered in past Trotting Cups - he was runner-up in 1944 and 1945. Possibly he would still of won no matter how the race had been run, but does a horse who has performed like a moderate between one Cup meeting and another really earn a cheque for £5000 at the conclusion of a dirge like Saturday's race turned out to be?
The power went off as soon as Double Peter took charge. The Gold Bar kilowatts were imprisoned in there generator up at Yaldhurst. So lethargic did Double Peter become with a mile covered that he nearly deposited himself in the lap of his trainer, R Young. Turtles would have looked like cheetahs alongside him. In Indian file, two abreast, they sauntered the third half-mile in 66secs after taking 2:14 for the first mile, speed that would not embarass any Timaru Nursery Stakes candidate worthy of consideration.
It is beyond comprehension why trainers prepare their horses to stay two miles in 4:16 or better and are then content to allow one horse to dictate the conditions of a race worth a fortune by looking on while a veteran slows up the field to an amble and reduces three-quarters of the race to a speed that a country cup winner could do in a hearse nowdays. The truth of the 1946 NZ Trotting Cup is that everything played right into the hands of a master craftsman in D C Watts. If he had had the race made to order he could not have wished for anything better. No one wanted to make the pace and no one did - ever.
The past of any NZ Trotting Cup winner should be great. A glance at the Index to Performers reveals that Integrity was unplaced in all of his eight starts prior to his Cup success, and it is difficult to reconcile his abject failure in the Hannon Memorial Handicap at Oamaru five days beforehand with his lightning half-mile thrust to wrest Cup honours from Josedale Grattan. But it must have been a case of strength through weakness because he was a raging favourite from the moment the machine opened. And once he left the mark Integrity had the dawdling two-miler type at his mercy. He is virtually a two-minute horse, though it is only about once a year he produces it.
Josedale Grattan, 300 times a father, and returning to racing afer 15 month's absence, put the younger generation of the field to complete shame. The pity of it was that he went to the post without the winding-up race that might have clinched victory for him. F J Smith's judgement in putting the 11-year-old stallion back into work because he summed up the Trotting Cup possibilities - with the sole exception of Emulous - as by no means of champion calibre, or past their best, was bourne out by the performances of the majority of Saturday's field. When Emulous went sore and did not have the opportunity of qualifying, Smith made no secret of the fact that he expected Josedale Grattan to win. How close he went to doing so, after faltering slightly about 100 yards from the finish, emphasises one of two things - either that Josedale Grattan is a super horse, or that our other Cup horses are mostly has beens. Lets grow old together!
The newest horses in the Cup field, Volo Senwod and Knave of Diamonds, were eliminated in the run home. Knave of Diamonds was literally climbing over everything with less than a quarter to go and eventually succeeded in doing so; he lost his driver near the furlong post. Even old Burt Scott, with many facets to angular shadow, was full of running with nowhere to go in the final furlong, and Countless also appeared to be looking in vain for an opening in the concluding stages.
Integrity is a breeding freak. He is a beautiful chestnut of porcelain quality and refinement, yet his pedigree is the most lowly of any Cup horses racing today. His sire, Trevor de Oro, was a ponified pacer of moderate performances, and his dam, Cheetah, was an unraced mare by Grattan Loyal, a line that, apart from Integrity, has produced nothing in the nature of a champion.
Now eight, Integrity was bred by A and R Gardiner, of Lower Hutt, and was purchased by his owner-trainer, V Leeming, as a yearling. Integrity has won £14,507 in stakes and trophies to date, and becomes the biggest light-harness stake-winner in New Zealand and Australia. The previous record stood to the credit of Great Bingen, who won £14,120, of which £13,320 was earned in the Dominion and the remainder in Perth.
Credit: 'Ribbonwood' writing in NZ Trotting Calendar 6Nov46