PONY RACING.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 256, 29 October 1929, Page 5

PONY RACING.

ATTRACTING UNDESIRABLES.

WHAT HAPPENS IN SYDNEY.

NEW ZEALAND OFFICIAL'S VIEWS

"It is a matter of plain knowledge that about the pony races in Australia many of the undesirables gather. In the courses controlled by the legitimate racing bodies there is at least some attempt to stem this surge of rascality at the gates. Convicted pickpockets and thu"s are firmly warned off by the management. No doubt some manage to liass the cordon, but they are not allowed to drift in unchecked, as they seem, to do on pony courses." The speaker was Mr. W. G. Abbott, a New Zealander who for the past 10 years has been residing in Australia. Mr. Abbott returned to Auckland oy the Ulimaroa; from Sydney this morning. For three years lie occupied the position of stipendiary steward in Queensland, and was also course manager at Ascot, Sydney. The latter pface is where the pony racing takes place. 'Tony racing in Australia is quite different to racing in New Zealand," he said. All that is accomplished by pony racing organisations in Australia is not to improve the breed of horses, but to spoil the men who are associated with it. It attracts two classes to its meetings—the members of the great one-a-minute brigade, which supplies the money, and the sharks and hawks, who are attracted to any low and doubtful sport. The people of New South Wales can find no use for this midweek travesty of horse racing, and when its courses become the dwelling grounds of Sydney's underworld it is time that the Government should consider whether some of them should not be closed, with the ill-conducted hotel and the disorderly house." Mr. Abbott, when referring to "the .sport," said the yarn about racing improving the breed of horses had not the slightest application to a. course where the horses were undersized eulls from racing stables, utterly hopeless so far as utility was concerned. BrigadierGeneral W. H. Anderson, who recently arrived ill Australia for the purpose of buying mounts for the Indian Army, declared that, though there were 11,000 horses in training in Australia, there was difficulty in obtaining the utility types he required. "If the blood horses are not beingused as sires for utility types," said Mr. Abbott, "why on earth keep up the fiction of improving the breed?"