DERBY CONTRASTS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 August 1928, Page 4

DERBY CONTRASTS

UPROAR AND SILENCE OF SURPRISE. (By J. AI. N. Jeffries). LONDON, June 7. : If someone were to detail tile seven wonders of the modern world—it so be it that there are seven—ho most certainly would have to include the Derby. It grows more colossal, more astonishing yearly. Some observers say that yesterday’s “145th Renewal of the Derby Stakes,” as the official programme bad it, was attended by a record crowd, and others that half a million people were present. Conservative judges say it was the largest attendance for ten years.

There was cheering, shouting, the singing of hymns, the crash of rattles, the blast of trumpets, the clapping of hands, the noise of engines, the din of whistles, all rising from that thronged enclosure.

At tho place of vantage on the rails, just beyond the judge’s box, the crowd was forty-three deep. Away ofT to the left, on tho near side of the course, the enclosures and watchingplaces, right to the bend of the course on the horizon, wore as thick with people as if they had been swept in with brushes.

So many omnibuses were there side by side that at first sight those on their tops appeared to an ordinary •section of the general mass. ROYAL WEATHER.

It was only on looking closer that you saw the rank upon rank of scarlet omnibus fronts, like a line of dragoons, and realised that enough

spectators wore poised in the air on those packed roofs to congest many a well known provincial town. Over the scene royal weather presided. The beautiful green of the downs was backed by a ring of high, white clouds standing back respectfully from file sun which played upon everything. It was too- hot for many onlookers, indeed, and, especially in flic prodigiously thronged popular sections, they sat with cooling drink upon suc-h space of ground as they could get content if they got hut a ghostlike vision of the passing horses an tho great, race. A TENSE SILENCE. That race was tho surprise wo know and was greeted with the silence of intense surprise. The horses came down the straight in a string, helstead winning all the way, with none of the struggle and surging and receding which tears yells from the throats of racegoers. He came on. He passed the post. The silence endured; you could have heard a curate sav “Well! well!”

There was a. polite cheer when Folstoad’s owner led him in. looking eim ncnt.iy pleased but surely even himseli just a trifle surprised. Tie just grasped tho end of tho rein and dropped it at the entrance to the enclosure, a stablcTinnd taking the main grip.

If it was a vast Derby and a sunny Derby it. was also a cheery one. There was laughter everywhere. Tho merry-go-rounds and swing i were doing good” business, some ingenious young riders getting into the swings during the races, so that at the top of their curve they could obtain a bird’-eye view of everything. Tho food-stalls were active a‘nd the owner of one who offered the public ,; the finest cockle that money can buy” scorned to be finding an unusual market for the superfine. The throwing-saloons and the coco-nut shies made a, brave show, and so did the fortune-tellers, though even they were scarcely equal to the African thouglit’-rcador who on bis banner advertised 27 years’ experience of thought. THE POLTCEALAN'S TIP. There were relatively many women on one side, of the course, relatively few on the other. The type known as “modern women” were markedly absent; it would seem as if only really womanly, dependent women cured for the Derby. Wlmt was that one heard from two of them as they passed: “Lot's put it on each way, the way like that policeman told us.”

c FRENCHMAN’S VIEW. i (Ry George Adam, the well-known Paris journalist). i My first English Derby has taught 1 me that Kings can afford to be nr-re democratic than Presidents. When the President of the French Republic arrives at Longohump lie is surrounded by much official pomp and is conducted with due formality to a special pavilion. The royal party yesterday drove up, with a few mounted policemen in attendance, and sat in the royal box in tbe general stand. Tile Prime of Wales was able, without causing heart failure to the police., to press his way through the crowd to look the horses over in the paddock just Iceiore the great race. The chief note of Epsom is the longsustained bellow of the bookmakers, compared with which the thudding of the pari-mutuel stamps at a French racecourse is but a faint murmur. There is about the same contrast ; between the only original Epsom j Derby and the French Derby of J Chantilly, both in the scene and in | the crowd, as there is between a bottle of champagne and a mug of four-ale. For dirt, din, and discomfort Epsom must surely stand in a class by itself, and even though there were ho ! enthusiastic French shouts acclaiming a victory of “Ilueblays”-—which is French for the pricked Bubbles 11. my day at the Derby did not disappoint me. The crowd made up for everything with its cheerful determination to enjoy even the dust, the heat, and an outsider’s victory. After I have seen Epsom I feel that the peacockings of mannequins across shade-dappled lawns in France will not he <ielite as attractive as the memory of those downs of Epsom rendered hideous by advertisements, blaring with bookmakers and steam organs, littered with orange peel and paper, and redolent of good humour.