LIGHT-WEIGHT RIDERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2323, 8 September 1898, Page 36

LIGHT-WEIGHT RIDERS.

The present supply of exercise lads and" light-weight jockeys is not equal to the demand in Otago, and the pigmies have control of the situation, Knowing their value, these youngsters refuse to accept engagements other than by the week, and they have their employers in strict subjection, trainers realising that if they dare to speak a cross word, or to insist on a job being done their way, it is at the risk of some mannikin pitching down his fork and going home. The position as regards the exercise lads is annoying. With respect to the feather-weight jockeys it is really serious, inasmuch as our ordinary handicaps have a 6.7 minimum, and in Otago we can scarcely find half a dozen boys worth calling horsemen who can ride that weight, while Canterbury is very little better off. The experiences at Timaru were such as to foreshadow endless trouble in this direction when the racing season is in full swing. Inexperienced youngsters, who were simply unable to carry out instructions, had to be put up in several of the races, and some of the riding was awful. The remedy is hard to find. One thing that might have been done was to raise the rnininmm weight to 7.0 ; but owners of good horses do not like the idea of this reform, and can hardly be expected to advocate it. In any case, the opportunity for making such a change has passed. The Racing Conference would require to sanction the alteration, and this body will not be sitting again until the dead season returns. By that time we will probably have had a sickening of the existing arrangements, and some action will in all likelihood be forced upon the conference. What the remedy is I am hardly prepared to say. At a first glance the apprenticeship system would seem to be the thing, but I doubt very much whether the boys would sign on to an employer under indentures. -They prefer to keep an open market, and to change and chop about for better terms. It is a continuous experience to find a good lad seduced from his work by a promise of better wages and more race-riding in another stable. The rules profess to safeguard this, but in practice they are inoperative, since a trainer would just as soon lose an unwilling boy as compel him to remain in a service that he wishes to leave, and it is no satisfaction to complain afterwards to the Jockey Club. The whole question wants a thorough consideration, and before long our authorities will have to face it, for it is intolerable that races should be perpetually made a source of danger, and handicaps spoiled, and horses' tempers ruined, and races lost because of the want of competent horsemen.

SECTION 8 OF THE RULES OF RACING. I am informed that the Colonial Secretary has pointed out that several races in some of the programmes issued contravene the provisions of section 8 of the Rules of Racing. Five per cent, being deducted from the stakes for expenses, the combined entrance and acceptance fees exceed 5 per cent, of the amount of money given in stakes for several of the events. It is as well that this should be known at once, as several country programmes are about being prepared, and hitherto it has, I think, been the custom to read this rule liberally and allow the usual 5 per cent, to apply to tho whole programme.