Paeroa not favoured

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 21

Paeroa not favoured

i The President of the Rac•ing Conference, Mr Hughes, ? told delegates that any application by the Paeroa Racing Club in future to hold •its race meetings at Paeroa ’would not receive a favourable recommendation by his 'executive committee. The Paeroa club lost its grandstand in a fire last i summer. M-r Hughes said the i Racing Authority and the 'conference executive comrmittee felt it .was timely for ■'serious consideration to be ( given to regionalisation in ithe Thames Valley area. • There was undisputable ! evidence that the interests '/of racing would be best Lserved if Paeroa, Te A-roha. and Thames confined their i activities to either one or two racecourses. >• In spite of some earnest! “endeavours to achieve some; /form of amalgamation] i-Paeroa had decided to proJlceed with the replacement of' •’its grandstand and had said -that it did not wish to be * involved in any future dis--i cussions about regionalisation. •” Mr C. E. Marceau, the delegate to the an- '! nual meeting, said tenders '‘for the grandstand would be ■t let within the next few days t and it was hoped that buildj ing work would start in ■4 August. ■? Frank Wilson, a Waikato ” studmaster, and Brian Smith, '( the former Cambridge train-

■ er, failed to have terms of , disqualification reduced by • the Conference. Mr Wilson was disI qualified for three years i after he had been convicted ■ of corrupt practice in the ; running of his stud. He was unsuccessful with an appli- ; cation he brought in the • High Court to prevent i charges from being heard by , the executive committee of ; the conference and an ap- . peal to the Court of Appeal . failed. Smith was disqualified in

July, 1979, for two years and a half. This was reduced on appeal to 18 months. He unsuccessfully sought conference permission yesterday to fesufne training before the end of January to allow him to get horses back into racing before next winter.

Mr Hughes was re-elected unopposed as conference president and Mr E. C. W. Nathan started another term unooposed as vice-president.

The members of the executive committee are

Messrs W. J. Sandman (Auckland), J. A. G. Fulton (Canterbury), R. L. Williams (West Coast), W. E. W. Ormond (Hawke’s Bay), R. J. Gilbert (Otago), W. A. H. Thompson (Southland), B. Kelly (Taranaki), R. A. Robinson (Taranaki), N. J. Collins (Wanganui), and W. L. Mills (Wellington). The conference’s levy on clubs for the year will be $625,000, the same as last year’s.