SELLING RACES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11235, 5 April 1897, Page 6

SELLING RACES.

f“ Canterbury Times.”] Some years ago the Australian Jockey CUrb discontinued the insertion of selling races into the programmes for its meetings, and now the Sydney sporting papers aro urging that the club shall insist that all clubs racing under its jurisdiction shall do the same. The Victoria Racing Club has not gone quite so far as the Australian Jockey Club, but if we remember right it has only one selling race on all its programmes, and this is for two-year-olds. The selling races run on' the suburban courses of Victoria and New' South Wales have for many years bean a disgrace to racing. They aro (productive of more jobbery and rascality than all the other races put together. Still the presiding clubs of tbe two colonies have not considered it necessary to put a stop to them. With their own cases it is different, however. They have, doubtless, long ago ...at the conclusion that . selling races, ■'“besides not being conducive to healthy sport, are degrading to clubs of their standing. This is indubitably correct, and it is quite time the authorities of the Canterbury:' Jockey Club-arrived at a similiar opinion. The Canterbury Jockey Club is not in want of the few pounds it derives from selling races. The events themselves are, to all intents and purposes, useless for the purpose for which they are intended. If sound horses win them they aro generally repurchased by their owners, and if unsound horses win them they are so broken down as to bo utterly worthless for racing or any other purposes, and usually fail to elicit a bid. Then, again, it should be beneath the dignity of tha principal club iu New Zealand to place such events on its programmes. For in- ■ stance, how incongruous it is to see a field of “ leather-flappers ” competing for the Shorts of 50 sovs an hour or two after the New Zealand Cup and Welcome Stakes have been decided, and the same animals, probably, starting for the Auction Handicap of 50 sovs just altfer the decision of the Derby and the Metropolitan Handicap. Again, at Easter, almost (Erectly after we have seen the Champagne Stakes and the Great Easter Ha ndicap run we shall descend to the Gimcrack Race, of 50 sovs, while half an hour after the decision of the Fifth Challenge Stakes comes the Addington Plate, of 75 sovs. Considering the prosperous condition of its finances the Canterbury Jockey Club should have no race on its programme of a smaller value than 100 sovs, and these so-called selling races should be expunged immediately.