Camel races on the bill

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34126, 12 April 1976, Page 9

Camel races on the bill

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Crspdt) ■ SYDNEY. I A well-known Sydney race caller who usually says that any losing horse “is running like a camel” is about to find out just what a racing camel really looks like. Camel racing has been set down for both Canberra and Sydney in the next few weeks. The Sydney race will be mainly jfor fun, with the jockeys dressed as Arabs, but the Canberra races will be serious. The Sydney races are being organised by Mr G. McHugh, a New* South Wales farmer who caught five camels in the Simpson Desert, south of Alice Springs, and walked them 2500 km in four months to his farm. Mr McHugh, a former jackeroo who shares a farm with five, friends will run eight races asi part of the Royal Easter Show. His jockeys will ride behind the hump, unlike the Afghans who originally brought camels | to Australia. “They ride on top of the hump, but I don't like that,” Mr Me-j Hugh said. “The camels can spit ( at you and try to bite. Back! where I am they can’t reach me.” Two Canberra businessmen, Messrs A. Sedaitis a restaurateur, and L. Cornock, a car dealer, have been given permission to run two camel races during the Canberra Trotting Club's meeting on April 24. Mr Sedaitis said that some people thought the camel races would be a joke; but he and his partner were quite serious, and it was hoped that there w’ould be full betting. His top jockey would be Noel Sylvester, who rode the horse that ran third in the 1962 Melbourne Cup, but can no longer make the weight for racehorses. Mr Sedaitis said he **got the cold shoulder” from Sydney clubs, but had been welcomed in Canberra. He and his partner had been catching camels near Alice Springs for several months, and had been training them there. It took a special skill to ride camels, he said, since their galloping motion was quite differ-1 ent from that of horses. Jockeys) virtually had to learn to ride again.