| FEATURE RACE COMMENT |
YEAR: 1948
1948 DOMINION HANDICAP
Full Result
First: J T Taylor's GREAT VENTURE. Trained by the owner and driven by S A Edwards, started off 12yds.
Second: L F Berkett's TOUSHAY. Driven by the owner, started off 24yds.
Third: J R McKenzie's FANTOM. Driven by G B Noble, started off 60yds
Fourth: Bruce Bros' ACCLAIMATION. Driven by M Holmes, started off Scratch.
The winner won by five lengths, with three lengths back to third.
Also started (in finishing order): Medical Student, Rerewaka, Belmoral, Pardon Me and Ariel Scott.
Credit: NZ Trotting Calendar 17Nov48
YEAR: 1972
CECIL DONALD
The first trainer in either code to train 1000 winners (in 1972) Cecil Donald has a special hniche in harness racing history. But a simple stat hadly does him justice. In an erawhen the Purdon have rewritten most training records, the innovation and scope of the vintage Donald years stand out as exceptional.
Donald was the "young man in a hurry" of the trotting world from the time he started out training at Addington in 1922. Having five horses was considered a large professional stable then, and only people like James Bryce had 20. Donald soon had 30 in work. Within seven years he had won his first training and driving premierships, his 45 training wins being 11 more than the previous best. He also held the driving record.
After a hat-trick at Forbury he was described in the media as a "healthy vigourous young man whose secret is his personal supervision every day of a huge team of 30 horses." When Cecil won his final Premiership in 1961 he had equalled James Bryce's enduring record of seven. He had won an Auckland Cup (Carmel) and quinellaed the Dominion Handicap (Kempton, Writer) within 12 months of his first. He also posted the lowest winning total of any premiership with 17 wins in 1941-42 when there were only 559 races and huge travel restrictions. Through that era his operation and enterprise constantly attracted headlines.
Some of the major ones:
* In 1931 he became the first to drive and win a race at Addington (the first) the morning after driving in the seventh race at Alexandra Park. Donald had arranged for Captain McGregor to fly his primitive aircraft from Christchurch to Feilding, left the Northern Express near there for his first plane ride and was able to inspect his stable before the first race.
* Early trainers stood stallions to make ends meet but Donald went a lot further with Jack Potts which arrived from America as a 3-year-old in 1922 imported by Alec Anderson. Jack Potts, a lovely pacer, and the only American pacing-bred sire available then, became the breeding phenomenon of his era winning nine successive sires premierships.
* In 1938-39 Jack Potts was the first to leave 100 winners in a season. Donald also stood sons of Jack Potts such as Gamble (2nd in a NZ Cup) which at times caused some problems with officialdom. In 1937he had over 150 horses at Belfast, unheard of in that era. He also raced and trained gallopers and stood thoroughbreds at stud.
* Calumet Axworth, a disappointment, and Lusty Volo, a £1500 purchase, were stallions Donald imported from America. Lusty Volo died from heart failure whe his oldest crop were only two. He left top liners Great Venture and Sir Michael as well as the dam of Our Roger.
* At the 1937 New Zealand Cup meeting Donald was the leading trainer, the leading driver and his stallion Jack Potts the leading sire - another unique record. At the 1940 New Zealand Cup meeting, Donald trained the winner of the NZ Cup (Marlene), the Dominion Handicap (Tan John, a $16 buy and then aged 14) and the NZ FFA (Plutus) - a feat not repeated in the 72 years since.
* Cecil quoted his feat of training the home-bred but chronically unsound Marlene, then seven, to win the Cup as his finest achievment. As usual his skilful brother, Ron, drove, Cecil believing lightweight was an advantage in the cart. He had also been severely injured in a fall driving Accountant that year. But Cecil drove Cairnbrae (an 8-year-old) with supreme judgement (led last mile) to win his second Cup for owner Ted Lowe in 1964 at a time when the various brackets including King Hal, Gildirect, Urrall, Falsehood and Dandy Briar were popular combinations with the public. Donald had minor placings in other Cups with Lindbergh, Jack Potts, Bayard, Lary Shona and Falsehood.
* More than once he produced three horse brackets in the race. Dandy Briar won an Auckland Cup. In later years Chief Command, Indecision and Rauka Lad were his top pacers.
* In 1941 Donald based his entire racing team at Oamaru in the weeks leading up to the August Addington meeting because of the drier tracks. "The Belfast track was always a problem in winter but those were the sort of ideas he would come up with," Donald's former chief assistant Bob Nyhan recalls.
* A Donald innovation relieved a disastrous fire at Belfast which killed his high class pacer Accountant, a brother to Marlene. He had a special irrigation system for his track. "It was something new," Nyhan said. "Nobody bothered to water their training tracks like that. He also groomed the track during training sessions." When a rear barn burst into flames during the night in June, 1944, only the resources of the track watering system saved the main barn. Five horses died in the fire, most by suffocation.
* In 1950 Donald who had held some large sales of his own of young stock here in the 1930's, landed in Sydney with 25 horses to sell or, if not sold, to race. Among them was the stallion Gamble which fetched 1300 quineas. Most of the rest found a new home.
* The Donald training regime accentuated the basics. He had extraordinary patience in "setting a horse up" - claimed as 12 months or more by some. "He was a great feeder," Nyhan remembers. Glocose was a staple part of the horse's diet and his biggest successes were with stayers.
* Don Nyhan used to recall how Donald would put colts together on trucks without stalls as part of their education.
* Beside all that Ces Donald was a leading cattle dealer and eventually bought farms to cater for his stock. To manage one of the biggest racing teams in the country, a stud, and maintain his dealing interests makes him one of the rare achievers in the Kiwi harness world.
Credit: David McCarthy writing in HRWeekly 2May12
YEAR: 2000
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Three weeks ago, Warren Stapleton gave himself no chance of having a horse in next week's Dominion. Cedar Fella had just broken down again, and this time he was definitely being retired for good, and McGrady, the latest open class trotter recruited as a crock to the Mid-Canterbury stable, was not looking much of a prospect either.
That all changed in a very short space of time this week when McGrady, "half trained" to finish second to One Kenny at Forbury Park in his first outing for Stapleton last month, had an outing at the Methven trials last Saturday and finished a hard held fourth off 40m. "The winner went a track record 3:31 for the 2600m and we were just jogging," said Stapleton.
While that may have appeared a mere form of encouragement for most, it was enough for Stapleton to be one of a handful of significant supporters of McGrady on the tote when the injury-plagued 9-year-old gelding - the veteran of just 49 starts now - took out the feature trot on Cup Day with plenty of authority at odds of 60 to one.
With Ricky May commited to Pure Adrenalin, Mark Jones was at the helm when McGrady began best from wide out, handed up to One Kenny with a lap to go, and spurted clear up the passing lane. Sunny Action, the outsider bar one, tracked McGrady throughout and got within three-quarters of a length, while odds-on Sundon's Way was in a gap of almost three lengths, like stablemate Buster Hanover finding a handicap in a fast-run race too much to overcome.
"He looked and felt super in his prelim and it wasn't really a surprise to me at all when he won," said Jones. "They got up to his wheel in the straight and then he put his head down and took off," he added. McGrady is "chronically unsound" and has been with Stapleton for about six months - "he even broke down again on me in another place. I have had him almost ready three times - he wasn't right for Forbury Park - but I had to give him a run somewhere," said Stapleton. "He will go straight into the Dominion now, but I am not about to go beating my drum for that or make any promises he won't break down again. But he has finished second in a Rowe, beaten a neck by Merinai, and fourth in the Dominion to Cedar Fella beaten less than a length. He has been an absolute heartbreak horse but he is very brave," he added.
McGrady, a son of Merinai's sire Tuff Choice who has now won nine races and $113,000, is raced by Auckland's Ken and Mrs Diana Hosgood and the estate of breeder Joan File. He is one of just two foals from Highland Lass, a daughter of Lordship, the maternal sire also of Yulestar. McGrady belongs to a family noted for many fine pacers, but his third dam Bonny Venture was a U Scott half-sister to 1948 Dominion winner Great Venture.
He was previously trained by Bruce File, for whom he last won at Cambridge in July, 1999. "I am really pleased for the owners - everytime Ken would ring I would have somthing wrong to tell him. I have no doubt they will be down here next week now."
Credit: Frank Marrion writing in HRWeekly 16Nov00
YEAR: 1965
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Last week light harness racing lost one of it's most pleasing and engaging personalities with the death of S (Stan) A Edwards at the comparatively early age of 56 years.
Stan, "Young Stan" as he was known throughout his career, was something more than merely an exceptionally good horseman and trainer. He was a philosopher ever ready to give a helping hand, whether by deed or word, whenever or wherever his advice or assistance was required. What is more, he had a keen and delightful sense of quiet, kindly humour, winning himself a wide circle of friends in all walks of life.
It was natural that Stan would make trotting his life. A son of "Manny", an outstanding horseman at the turn of the century, and a brother to the late Dil, recognised as an expert trainer and driver, Stan came on the light harness scene at an early age. As a mere boy he quickly won recognition as a saddle horseman at a period when this type of racing was a regular feature of all meetings and the standard of horsemanship was of the highest. Stan was regarded as having few equals and no superiors in this field, also as a trainer.
He was associated with numerous horses of high quality. He and Ripcord, one of the greatest trotters ever seen, made a perfect combination, and he also handled Great Venture, a Dominion Handicap winner, in faultless style. He developed and drove Silver de Oro and Sir Julian to take major honours in the NZ Sapling Stakes, and he drove War Buoy in a number of his races. War Buoy, of course, still holds the record number of successive wins, scoring in each of his first 10 starts. That was a remarkable achievement because he started out as a 2-year-old by winning a handicap event against pacers of all ages, shapes and sizes and only bad luck brought about his first defeat in his eleventh appearance.
Other top-class horses Stan was associated with included Star Rosa (Champion Stakes), Hilda Scott (Greymouth Cup), Thunder (National Cup), Gamble, Blair Athol, Nell Grattan, Our Kentucky, Lady Belmer (Easter Cup), Black Douglas and Maori Queen, to mention a few.
Stan was keenly interested in the Horsemen's Association of which he was president for some years, and his passing left a big gap in all departments of light harness racing.
Credit: NZ Trotting Calendar 26May65