A candid view of racing ‘Down Under’

Press, 9 March 1982, Page 27

A candid view of racing ‘Down Under’

From KEN COATES London

Cheap admission prices and excellent facilities at New Zealand racecourses were found by an English racing journalist, Tony Morris, according to a report by him in the “Sporting Life,” which looks candidly at racing "Down Under.” He says that a five-hour meeting is fun, and not a test of endurance. “The New Zealander, unlike racegoers almost everywhere else in the world, does not get ripped off at the turnstiles," he adds. “I can well imagine the horror felt by foreign visitors to Britain at the toll exacted for the privilege of enduring the privations of our racecourses." In New Zealand almost everybody seemed perfectly happy with tote-only betting, “as well they might after 70 years of. knowing nothing else. “They told me they did not have a doping problem in New Zealand. I should hope not, but they appear to be asking for one,” says Morris. “I won’t say that security in the stable areas was always lax, but I will say that it was always non-existent.”

Morris noted the occasional sign saying “authorised persons only," but says he and a host of “similarly unauthorised nobodies" were never challenged as they mingled

freely with horses due to run later in the day. Many horses were simply tied to a post, and unattended. Morris has something to say on the standard of jockeys: “I didn’t expect they would all be Lester Piggotts and Pat Edderys, but I wasn’t quite prepared for them all to be whip-flailing cowboys (and girls) who never appeared to have their mounts properly balanced in a finish. “They really are a most ungainly looking crew.” Another aspect of New Zealand racing which draws the journalist’s criticism is what he calls "the tedious predilection for presentations and speech-making after big races." He notes that “the committee of the racing club lines up, as though waiting for a firing squad, then the chairman steps forward to the microphone, mutters a few ill-chosen platitudes, studiously making certain to get the winner’s name wrong and confuse the owner with the trainer. “After that embarrassing exercise, up step the owner, trainer, jockey and anybody else who fancies himself as a public speaker. “The whole amounts to a display of yuk which might be used on television to illustrate what the off switch is for.”

Morris said it was his first

impression that it was ridiculous to have the horses walking around at the start for 10 or a dozen minutes. But this seemingly timewasting exercise was what the public wanted. “The New Zealand racegoer knows his horses and will not be parted from his cash until he has seen them in the birdcage and doing their preliminaries. “I couldn’t help thinking that if Joe punter had actually got something the way he wanted it, jolly good luck to him.” Morris describes racecallers as sounding more like auctioneers than commentators — and they turned out to be auctioneers. “Nice people and knowledgeable horsemen to boot, charming to talk to, but at the microphone just a trifle indistinct to the English ear, don’t you know,” he says. He says the brightest sight on New Zealand racecourses is the winner’s enclosure after the running of the Wellington Cup and the Wellington Derby. “I don’t mean the silly ceremonies and all that. I mean the fact that both big winners were trained by striking attractive, shapely women in their twenties.” English trainers could be charm personified on occasions, “but they just don’t decorate a winner’s enclosure like Leone Pratt and Davina Waddell,” he adds.