Coast Clubs Want Trots

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 5

Coast Clubs Want Trots

(N.Z. Press Association)HOKITIKA. A remit requesting that the New Zealand Racing Conference treat the West Coast as a special area in which trotting events will be permitted on racing club programmes will be submitted by the clubs of the West Coast at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Racing Conference in July. The decision was made by representatives of the Westport Jockey Club, Reefton Jockey Club, Kumara Racing Club, and the Westland Racing Club at a special meeting held at Reefton during the week-end. The remit will ask for exemption for West Coast clubs from the recent ban imposed on trotting events on racing club programmes on the grounds that the West Coast is a special area isolated by long distances from big training centres and on the fact that there is a distinct paucity of gallopers in training north of Dunedin. In a press release after the meeting it was stated that official conference figures for the month of November disclosed that south of Dunedin 290 gallopers were in training. In the remaining nine-tenths of the South Island only 270 were trained and this figure included 50 gallopers trained on the West Coast.

It is considered an impossibility to frame a varied eightrace programme of galloping events on the West Coast that would have fields sufficiently large to attract public support while normally large fields were paraded for the two trotting events. The majority of entries in these races were West Coast-trained horses.

The metropolitan club of the district, the Greymouth Jockey Club, for the last two seasons deleted trotting events from its programmes. In neither year had it been able to honour its obligations to utilise its four race day permits. This is considered to be a true indication of the effect the ban on trotting events would have on the other four clubs involved.