Syndicate Ownership Permitted

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32035, 9 July 1969, Page 5

Syndicate Ownership Permitted

(New Zealand Press Association) ROTORUA. Syndicates of up to 20 people will be able to own or lease trotters and pacers during the 1969-70 season, which will open next month.

Until now,-no more than four persons have been able to jointly own or lease a horse.

In reaching the decision to admit syndicate ownership, the annual meeting of the New Zealand Trotting Conference in Rotorua yesterday stipulated that its move would be on trial for the 1969-70 season.

Syndicates, which are defined as any combination of more than four and not more than 20 persons, will have to be registered with the conference and may own or lease more than one horse. However, no person will be allowed to belong to more than one syndicate. Fears were expressed about the amount of bracketing of horses which would occur at meetings. Mr N. E. Pierce (Invercargill) said the move would bring more people into trotting. The president of the New

Zealand Metropolitan Trotting Club (Mr G. W. Blaxall), said he supported the move and hoped it would develop so that a person could belong to more than one syndicate.

No Half-Yearly Payments

(N.Z. Press Association) ROTORUA. It was quite impracticable for the Totallsator Agency Board to make half-yearly payments to trotting and racing clubs, a board member and the retiring president of the New Zealand Trotting Conference. Mr A. J. Nicoll, said yesterday at the conference’s annual meeting in Rotorua.

He had been asked by Mr L. G. Rieger (Manawatu) if it was possible to make half-yearly payments. Mr Rieger said the payment would be of assistance to clubs which found it necessary to have an overdraft while waiting for their share of proffts. Mr Nicoll said the board had gone into the matter ’’from every angle," but it was “quite impracticable. “