Fritzy Boy takes raceday glory

Masterton galloper Fritzy Boy made a welcome return to the winner's circle at Tauherenikau on Saturday winning the feature event at the Masterton Racing Club's Christmas meeting.
The gelding's win was well received by the local crowd who have dubbed Fritzy Boy the Pride of Wairarapa and his win helped the club cap a very successful day.
Club president Bruce Perry said on-course turnover approaching $120,000 coupled with excellent sponsorship and corporate support meant the club could take satisfaction from one of its best racedays in recent years.
The committee also gained an insight into further improvements it could make for next year's November meeting, the main one being to concentrate further on advertising and promotion.
Mr Perry said more effort would be made to tie the race meeting in with the Toast Martinborough festival and thereby attract more visitors from outside the district.
But, having said that he was pretty happy with the size of Saturday's crowd. What's more the rain stayed away, allowing racing to proceed in pleasant conditions.
Mr Perry said because rain had been forecast for the weekend he suspected some families chose not to risk coming to Tauherenikau and therefore the crowd was probably smaller than it otherwise would have been.
From a racing perspective the fields stood up extremely well and there were some very good race finishes, and performances.
In the Masterton Cup Fritzy Boy went out favourite in the small but good quality field and didn't disappoint his supporters.
The John Jury/Alby MacGregor owned gelding was not hurried into the race by jockey David Walker, who was having his first ride on Fritzy Boy and was allowed to run along until being asked for an effort with about 450m to run.
The win was Fritzy Boy's 10th and pushed his earnings to just over $600,000.
Another top effort was the win by Albus in a 1000m scurry.
The Awapuni-trained galloper sat at the tail of the field for most of the journey but when jockey Masa Tanaka put the pedal down Albus gathered in his opposition and won going away.
Earlier in the day Kiwi Lady from Kevin Gray's stable blitzed a maiden sprint field at her first race day outing, throwing out a hint of much better things to come and the highly regarded King Raedwald bounced back to winning form in a Rating 80 race over 1600m.
Masterton Racing Club has only raced twice at Tauherenikau after an absence of many years during which the club staged meetings at Trentham and other venues.
The renewed relationship with Wairarapa Racing Club seems to be working out well.