"BILLY" WESTON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2391, 28 December 1899, Page 40

"BILLY" WESTON.

I had a short letter thiu week from our old friend William Weston, dated from Adelaide, whither he had gone, from West Australia in order to meet and jnarry the Auckland lady who becomes his second wife. " Billy ' writes in his usual hopeful and sanguine style just before returning to Coolgardie, where he is in business with another under the ctyle of " Weston ancl Kiddle, forwarding agents, carriers, tobacconists, hairdressers, and billiard saloon proprietcri." I suppose that Kiddle cuts tho hair, while We; ton looks after the billiard tables. That is an old game of our acquaintance. The fii-st I knaw of Weston was when he had the Empire billiard room in Dunedin. It was while thci-a that he started to make books. Later cm he went to Chrifctchurch, and took to the turf r.ltogcther, doir.w a rather large business, and occasionally hacking for himself as well bb others — mixing tho laying with the backing. Ho also kept a few horse?. Linwood, the fcure and plodding steeplechaser, was one of his horaes ; Aroha, the black hunter, wr.s another ; and he also had an interest in Ravenswood and Conundrum, and one or two others. If he had been able .o keep going as a bookmaker he would pro". \W.y have developed into an owner of rank. p <ut the Lcchiel smash knocked him right ( -t. The Ring of that time thought, for iea-( ■ s hest known to themselves, that they cou'ei safely lay Lochiel for the New Zealand Cup. and when the ton of Nelly Moore won they >adu't the money to pay up. Much of that L f'liel money is owing to thi« day. The re-u.t to the Ring was rnr.ply crushing. Weston had to go down with the re«t of them. But he behaved honourably in the mattc-r. He told his clients frankly that they could take x»Il he pos 3 e-=f ed, and close the transaction. After that he settled in Sydney as a bookmaker; but he pined for the freedom and the excitement of the digging,, and fo far as I can make out he has done very fairly in West Australia. I alv.ays liked "Billy." He is \erv genuine. Alro, he is, or rather \\a'. a latthnt; billiard playo: — the be->t of hi-, (lav in tin < o'.onif a. 1 hope that his maniaga will bo the beginning oi a loan and pleahaut core or. And in this

wish there are hundreds of Kew Zealauders who will join me very heartily. '

, CRITICISING THE JOCKEYS. English people do not seam as proud of their jockeys as they "used to be. In the last Sporting Times to hand, Mr John Corlett wrote: What short distance racing has ( brought us to is a Yankee horse ruling the i roost as winter favourite for the Derby, { whilst with regard to tho jockeys we have recently had an important day's racing, in 1 which every winner was ridden by a Yankee jockey save one, when an English lad, who is scarcely regarded as a jockey, won by adopting the American methods. We cannot expect to have a Flying Fox every y-ear to ho.d the Yankees in check. But for the "Fox" we should this season have witnessed the Two Thousand and St. Lsger won by a Yankee, and the Derby preserved to \is only by tho luck of there not being a Yankee horse in the field. With regard to our jockeys, it must have become a very serious thing to them, so much money for winning mounts, with the presents attaching thereto, going outof their pockets. For years they have been a pampered race, and at last there is a rude awakening. For a time, and more especially in the Archer days, the jockey regarded himself as lord of all in the stable, and he would have regarded it as presumption if the trainer had ventured to suggest -how he should ride this or that horse. Some trainer might uossibly give instructions as to how the horse was to be ridden, but as likely as not the jockey would take not the slightest notice of them. Once we were criticising the way in which a horse had been ridden by an ex-jockey, who seemed to re-sent it. " Can you ride?" he arked in a somewhat waspish manner. " No/ we" replied. " Then don't you think it is a little forward on your part to talk like that-, about a man who can?" To this we rejoined : that we could not make a chair, but for all that we could tell whether the chair was well made or not. With jockeys crawling in every raco that savoured at all of extra distance on j tho one hand, or wirfning the race by getting ! a good start in a scramble on the other, the higher art of race-riding had, to a gro^ft extent, died out. How often do we hear it aaid nowadays of an English jockey that. " He is ! a fine_ judge of pace'"? We hear it of the Americans, but we heard tho last of it with our own lot when John Osborne retired. Captain Machell is reported to have said in a spirit of bitterness that no matter how clever you might be on the turf, and no matter how correct might be your arrangements, your jockcy3 would beat you. They have wound up by beating themselves. We have still two or three who may be regarded as first-class horsemen, and no more.