Slow-Class Races For All Clubs

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31727, 10 July 1968, Page 6

Slow-Class Races For All Clubs

All clubs will in future have to include a race with a limit of 2:20, 2:19 or 2:18 in .very programme as the result of a decision made at yesterday’s annual meeting of the New Zealand Trotting Conference. The days on which the New Zealand, Auckland and Well-, ington Cups are run and the dates on which a club runs the IntefeDomlnion Championship series are excluded. The races can be run as totalisator events, non-totali-sator events with stakes not less than the average paid for the same classes in the preceding season, or As races at any matinee meeting with the same stake restrictions, as for non-totalisator races. The meeting originally considered a remit from the Bay of Plenty club suggesting that only 2:20 class races be run, but later an amendment moved by Mr M. M. N. Corner (Auckland) extended the limit to 2:19 and 2:18.

Mr Corner said he agreed that there was a need for more races for maiden paeers, but it was too restrictive to cater only for them. Earlier the president (Mr A. J. Nicoll) said that the bottleneck today was in the 2:19 class and the Bay of Plenty remit in its original form would only add to the difficulties. Dr B. W. Nixon (Greymouth) and Messrs C. H. T. Morrison (Cheviot), C. W. Eyre (Te Awamutu), and E. M. Sutherland (Kurow) also spoke in favour of the remit, which was carried by a large majority. The Waimate club’s effort to have the right of re-entry made mandatory was defeated by an overwhelming majority. Clubs will not have to run a two-mile race before No-

vember 1 as from the start of the 196849 season. An Auckland remit on those lines was passed by a substantial majority. Clubs running meetings before November 1 will have to include one distance race for paeers. Mr Comer said that the remit did not make it man datory for clubs not to run two-mile races before November 1, but it would be permissible for them not to do

so. Many horses were not in work yet in the Auckland area because of wet weather and it was doubtful whether horses would be fit enough to run two miles before the first meeting for the new season was run in the district in September. He felt clubs would secure larger fields at early meetings so long as horses did not have to race over two miles. Messrs D. I. Macdonald (Wellington), C. R. Elliot (Morrinsville) and N. E. Pierce (Invercargill) spoke in favour of the remit, while Mr W. B. McCone (Oamaru) spoke against it.