WOMEN AND RACING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 139, 14 June 1932, Page 10

WOMEN AND RACING.

Are women true racegoers? Nearly all love a little gamble, but few ever enter enthusiastically enough into races to study the form of the horses, and watch the riders or the weights. Tlio average woman seems to turn a little psychic at every race meeting. "I have a hunch that so and 60 will win," she says. When pressed further she divulges that as elie was leaving the house a cat ,(a tangerine one), leaped across her path. When she entered the course the first horse she saw was number nine. So she looked up number nine and found that it had whiskers or milk embroidered in Its name, and also that the jockey's colours were yellow! Enough for her, and this story persuades three others to part with half a crown each, and a ticket is made up on the "hunch." So on for the rest of the day—backing horses with names that remind them of someone, or because they liked, the sound of its neigh. Tips, too, influence women a great deal, especially ones from the butcher or the baker. Training in domestic affairs seems to have made women have great faith in their tradespeople. During the last race meeting in Auckland a woman was heard to wail, "Oh, I wish I had backed that one instead; the woman in the fish shop told me to be sure and have a little on it." Also heard on the 6tands is an expression entirely understood by racing women. They say that "sucli and such a horse came in." "What came in?" you hear from an enthusiast, who lias not been looking at the race for its own sake, but who has been enjoying a little gossip while it was in progress. Of course, the second, third, and even the last horse have to come in, but to the racing woman it is only the first horse, the horse that pays a dividend, that comes in.