RECENT WELLINGTON ENTRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 22

RECENT WELLINGTON ENTRIES

(By ."Rangatira.")

HAS CLUB ERRED IN RAISING MINOR STAKES ?

A move thatls made with the the best of intentions occasionally does not have the result anticipated. It would seem as if this may have happened with the Wellington Racing Club in increasing its minor prizes to the highest minimum in the Ddminion.. The nominations received for the hack and novice events at the Summer Meeting last month did not show the improvement that might have been expected, numerically and in quality; and now the nominations that have been secured for the minor events at the Autumn Meeting, excepting only the two-year-old races, are even more disappointing. The relatively poor response that was received this week may have been pure accident. But the club should at least give thought to the consideration, before, issuing future programmes, whether it. is in its own best interests to keep the minor prizes at so high a level as it has recently been aiming: to do. Concentration on the feature items instead might bring fuller results. — ■ '■' -I'■*-■' ' ' ■ ■-" " . «

The Wellington/.Racing Club was among the first metropolitan bodies in ■- • , the Dominion, to/begin lifting its stakes '"'"' again after the years of the depression. Indeed it was probably the first, ana -■ that the policy was. well advised has 'been manifest. in- the /success of the - . meetings held.in the last two or three ■ years. It is now an .accepted, fact that ". Wellington Meetings: will be successful, ■' whatever the fields and whatever the -weather. But the/stewards are keen ; also'to induce the: best horses in com- ■'■"". mission in each.ygrade to come to '• Trentham. -.. : , ." , : .. . .-■ .-' ; At first, while the recovery from the days of the slump was moving slowly, it.was necessary to'be cautious in mak- - - ing any substanti;l increases in stakes, -'■■■■and the practice then was to lilt some .•" of the more important events back :: nearer their mean-prize level. That '■■ practice has .always brought results, even better results often than were be- ■ lieved possible; ..Clubs,that have con-' tinued this mode of drawing attention to their meetings are now staging some of the most, remarkably successful gatherings in.the Dominion, relative to their general classification as clubs, and among them .may be instanced .the Te Aroha and many other Auckland clubs, as weir as several Southland clubs. DEPARTURE FROM PRACTICE. :''' The Wellington iClub! and.particularly this season, h,as in a measure 4* parted'from,the.practice .noted,, and ;■• his 'concentrated <jn the level; of ..the minor stakes, which for ■ a time.had dropped as low_as ■Sl6O-.B&-V .-hack and novice .events. The id a of ■'' the stewards was ..apparently that the battling owner should have an ppppr- '- f^it stould be doing under theoretical feting^m-Octobg ;'fhe smallest stake' had been lifted to ■•-■ £250 as a successful fixture wai an+irinated owing to the inauguration '"' tvirpp ■or four years, the fixture was •: :■ aSp°ete fnnan ycidltVium P h. When the •'-■■• minimum. The: £300 minimum did.not ' ='' ■ attract such classy fields as,nt 'might. .'. have done, but the meeting, as. a...whole. . - v - ; was nevertheless;again the usual success from other; aspects, and so the minimum has; been continued at £300 • for the' coming meeting, next month. ,' It must be admitted at once it -.: was most unexpected to find a decline ■: in number of entries- for practically '"every race on the autumn schedule, ■•'■'• The figures for the-tw-year-old and ■ '- open races are jmuch as. they ■■ were -: twelve months ago,.but there are some -~ -almost unaccountable decreases m the -■■ hack and'novice .classes,- unless, the ex- .-•■ 'planation already, hinted at and to; be !;: " further expanded is-accepted as having ■ at least some" real, influence on the -'-'"■'quantity of the gentries.; ' - i*^~ ;it may be mentioned as'an-lllustra-. '-i-tion that the nomination for the Trial -,-VElate on the first day has/dropped - ~7:from 26 to 11, and that for,thehack '"".sprint on'thelast day from 52 to 19. 7"-£The. only minorentry that has held its ' :;4:last-year mark.is that for'the Cham--5-"-"pion Hack Cup, but even the,list for this race is much below what the Te Aroha Club secured for a similar type of race-on its card.for today's racing. . , WHERE FAULT LIES. .".■: -■-. .-On' ordinary reasoning it must ap--.:iz pear astounding i that such big, prizes: •■ = -as have been provided for minor events at the Wellington Meeting have not only not drawn large and almost: . unwieldy fields but have actually re- '"' ", suited in considerably decreased fields ~ ."on last year's figures at' nomination. :- But when one reasons over the whole '■'"-■: "nature of the programme, and not par- ; ticularly, it is possible to find where ,-:.. a fault may lie. : ■-. ' .-- -; ■The mistake the club has made, it is believed, is that it lias removed some- ;.*.- thing of the glamour that should sur-' : ■ round the stellar! items on the card by '.: its action in tending to level all the stakes. More" briefly it may be put: One or two races', if sufficiently attractive, can make a whole programme. One does not have to seek.far for '-'-illustrations. When' one thinks, for •' --instance, of the Riverton Meeting, one ■■ •'-' - -thinks only" of that valuable Riverton ; Gold Cup that the club ' has always ..- Ljealously protected, even at the nadir ■:■.-- of the depression. The Riverton Meet- -, ing at Easter is f,amed from one end of the Dominion to the : other. And so - now is the Te Aroha Meeting, a mere •'t provincial fixture that has brought .'.extraordinary eminence.to itself by a .."policy that might have had its risks at ' "first but has been justified in the results. One thinks of Te Aroha. as a ■i.■" ■ '' .

club that now gives a £1000 Cup, as valuable as the last Wellington Cup. "There may, of course, be many additional reasons for the success of these and . some • other similar, meetings. But the public and owners keep them always in mind because of the one or two star •. events on their schedule. ' The result in the long run may be that all stakes can be increased to excellent portions, but such clubs have built up or are still building up their renown on one or two particular events. OUTSIDE THE DOMINION. If one seeks illustrations outside the Dominion one could hardly do better than consider the case of the Onkaparinga Racing Club in South Australia. This club holds only the: one meeting a ..year- at Easter, but for several years it has featured a single item, the Great Eastern Steeplechase, whose. stake.it has kept increasing till it is now at the £3000 mark, more valuable than the V.R.C. Grand National. The Onkaparinga Club become a byword throughout the whole Commonwealth and even in this Dominion, where few could so much as name the metropolitan club of South Australia but all of any racing knowledge are spread the fame of that club; ]usta| fnr a time' the now-defunct Aqua Caliente Club was world-renowned, eter? before Phar Lap. made the name so significant in .the Dominion benancp the club put on what was tor a S'Sa'ce 0 the^most valuable horse race in any country .of the woild. Nothing was probably ever done with better intention than, the increasing of the minimum stake at recent WelLngton Meetings., But in making these in-creases,-the more important races have had to suffer, in a relative sense at feast The prize-money for the Thompson Handicap,' Autumn Handicap, and the two sprints has been lifted to an extent of £100 for each race-on the sumiiven last. year, and races have filled fairly satisfactorily;_but their'do not stand out m the whole Mogramme as they could, and hence ?he glamour that should . surround thl whSe meeting, has .in a degree been sacrificed. RACE AS ADVERTISEMENT. One race will advertise a ; whole meetog When New Zealand, horses "oo^to Australia it is usuallrwi th Snly one .or, two si> ec l ial 1 .^^egSes cularly in view. A club that realises toe Value there is in such .publicity, whether of only one or two feature events, generally secures- fields for all its races that are surprisingly large for he prizes that, are attached to the maiority of the other events. The Sh races staged a few years back by the trotting people was one instance of what feature events can do ta draw fields to a meeting, and, of course, also ai The Thompson Handicap at the coming Wellington Meeting is almost the most important mile race in. the Dominion. Yet it is not spoken about as the Easter Handicaps and. some other races are. It might be different, however, if a special, effort were made to feature the race. With the stakemoney the club had at, its disposal for. next month's meeting it would have been possible to make the Thompson another thousand-pounder, and four figures in stakes "talk." What matter, if some of the minor races carried only £250; that is quite a substantial stake for hacks, and ample for novice class. One of the anomalies of the final week of last month, for instance, was that the'winner of the Trial Plate at Trentham (it was Sea Wrack) won a £300 stake, and a few days later the winner of the Wanganui Cup. secured a stake of only £250! ■ '■■■■' The Thompson Handicap this year has admittedly drawn a good field for itself; but it has not. been used as it might as a "publicity agent" to attract fields ito the minor events on the card; Even as it is the. Thompson entry might have been considerably larger, for in numbers it is only the same strength as it was twelve months ago. If there had-been a £1000 or £1250 Thompson Handicap on the programme, the eyes of owners and trainers all over the Dominion would have been focused on Trentham, and the result, it is believed, would have been a bigger all-round entry. If a club can induce stables to travel to its meetings, then more than .one representative will generally come "from each such stable: and when one or two horses are going from any centre, there is an inducement for other trainers

at-the particular centre also to arrange to travel in the company. • The £300 minimum is probably not near the general inducement it was considered likely to be by the Wellington Club. It is the big events that offer the big inducement, and the rest follows as a matter of course. This seems the deduction to^be made from the response given to meetings such as the Te Aroha and some others in the Auckland and Southland Provinces. ■ Within the.next few weeks the Wellington Club will probably be drafting the programme for its next .fixture, the Winter Meeting in July.- The stewards will be required, to consider whether it is best policy to continue the high minimum for the hack and novice races, or to leave these as they were last winter, with a £200 minimum or a shade higher only, and concentrate on the bigger prizes, such as the' Wellington Steeplechase, the Whyte Handicap,- and the Winter Hurdles. If the reasoning in this article is conceded to contain a germ of truth, then the better policy might be to give' the large increases to the bigger events. ■ It is for the stewards to decide how large the prizes shall be, but a full four-figure Steeplechase seems a sine qua non to keep the race on a level with the Great Northern and Grand National Steeplechases; and ■ the Hurdles should not be much under that dimension, if the funds are available to ■ .carry the increases. The Whyte Handicap, of course, demands a substantial,, improvement, for last/ year there was the surprising anomaly of a £50 bigger prize for the Winter Oats on the final day than for the. Whyte. Ithas. always been contended too that the opent sprint event on the first day should be more valuable than the laterday sprints; but the Wellington practice at recent meetings has been to give the identical stake to them all, a levelling feature that might also be contested on the moral .ground that horses should be induced to show their best form at their first start at a m.eeting. ; " /