Day at the Races

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 144, 15 March 1938, Page 5

Day at the Races

f)NE of the most exciting things about the races is that the cheerful ignoramus always seems to win where the ‘shrewd-heads’’ fail. It seems to be the luck of racing that when a horse has _ romped home and paid the proverbial ‘’hatful’’ it is adways some bright-eyed pink-cheeked old woman—or a Chinese—who has one of the few tickets invested on the outsider. People come up and surreptitiously, touch the Chinese for luck, but he does not seem to mind. W fa ° knows—they may be lucky for him! To a student of human nature race-crowds provide a happy hunting ground. Most of the basic emotions—joy, hope, despair, fear, envy, greed—are mirrored in the faces of the crowd. A very modest gambler, 1 rely on watching the crowd for my enjoyment. Any bets I make are, so to speak, merely to show that I have the courage to support my judgment. , This sort of thing happens every day. A ’’dark horse” comes home and pays a big price. T here is a rush to the totalisator and shrill cries of wonder and excitement rise as the dividend is hoisted on the board. Soon, among the crowd, may be beard innumerable hard-luck stories from groups of excited women. The totalisator windows almost shut down on the fingers of Mrs. A as she was holding out a pound note to put on the winner straight out. Mrs. A’s friends, who know perfectly well that she had one shilling and threepence on the favourite for a place, comfort her with honeyed woods of hpyocritical sympathy. Almost believing her own tale of woe, t]gt mendacious one wanders away to another group leaving the more charitable of her friends to shrug their shoulders and the others to scatter her reputation in shreds to the four winds.

Equally untruthful and quite as amusing is the woman who in the midst of the discussion about the big dividend modestly admits that she had ten shillings on the horse for a win. Ten minutes later recounting the incident and her feelings before, after and during the race, she is quite unable to remember the name of the horse. Finally at the end of the day, she borrows ten shillings from a friend to cover the cost of her transport home and is then faced with the painful necessity of inventing another story to cover the supposed loss of her fictitious winnings. , “It hadn’t won in years. What on earth made you back an outsider like that?” a husband asks his wife whose investments have turned out more successfully than his. “That’s just it. He was due for a win,” and not all the arguments about following recent form will shake her, The horse won, didn't it! A woman will never back a horse with ugly colours unless it has a pretty name or is ridden by her favourite jockey. Then, though it may have been last in an earlier start the same day and may be carrying half a stone overweight at its second appearance she will back it. It couldn't have been trying the first time, she will tell you. These are just some of the things that make racing so uncertain, so exciting and so unfailingly popular.— I.McG.