ALLOCATION OF EXTRA PERMITS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26030, 6 February 1950, Page 5

ALLOCATION OF EXTRA PERMITS

CRITICISM BY PRESIDENT OF M'ESTPORT CLUB From Our Own Reporter WESTPORT, February 4. It was obvious that the recommendations made by the Trotting Conference had not been given consideration by the Minister or Westport would certainly have been given an extra day’? racing, said the president of the Westport Trotting Club (Mr W. H. Roche), recently, commenting on the allocation of extra permits to trotting clubs by the Minister of Internal Affairs (Mr W. A. Bodkin).

Mr Roche said that he and another member of his club had been assured by a leading official of the Trotting Conference that Westport was third in its list of clubs recommended for extra totalisator permits. He thought it unreasonable that it should have been preceded by 16 others in the Minister’s decision based on the report of the Commission on Gaming and Racing. The interest in trotting was much greater in the Buller district, both from a breeding and racing point of view, than in some places where clubs had been given an extra permit, said Mr Roche. He felt that the commission might have erred in classing Westport as part of the West Coast in general when deciding that the whole area had sufficient trotting dates. Five of the eight days of trotting (on the West Coast) in the year were held at Greymouth With the Buller district, so far removed from Greymouth in the time taken for travelling, there was a strong case for another day’s trotting at Westport, where owners and breeders had done perhaps more than those in other districts of its size to develop the sport.