ELECTRIC SPURS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2861, 13 January 1909, Page 54

ELECTRIC SPURS.

The discovery recently made at Perth thai the electric spur was in use there (as ! has been pretty generally supposed) is i sufficienr to set racing authorities else- ; ! where thinking if such illegal means are : not employed in other State*. Some little ; time ago "a note of warning was sounded as to the probability of the dope 1 and elecmc «pur being in use in the j ! Commonwealth, and now that one of the j agencies is known to have been employed | in the West we cannot be iure that some [ smart practitioner or orher has not been < gcit.rg hi 5 fine work, in here aJso. The ?cal© "faker," it is well known, practised his calling in all tk? States, and worked off liis little joke on some, if not all, of the principal clubs; and if such a risk of dis- | eoverv as ibat was accepted it is quite fair I to suppose that the readily adjusted electric spur is by no mean.? a new appliance in the ! j Cfunn-opwealth. Kig'ht through America, if | j we can beli-eve what we rfa-d, the use of the ; electric .>pur is quit© common, .and is said i to have I^en winked at by com rollers of i race meetings who were not too pai'ticular ! a* ro what means were employed to make j the animal or>erar»d upon go faster. Their ; ; pxcuso w;u tint thuy had no tinvs for slow ; | hor-e-,. Tlio fakod spur, however, like the , I faked -<\lk-.-. f)'i-^!,t no loiitf'i 10 bo po'-'ble ' , on rat-i o:ji -> . v. ii' c <\ 1 Joaw akc official* are j I acting; »r-l il>c Woet Ai'si vali.in discovery ' may thoiefoio hf- said to 'ha-vc <lone the turf j lin the^e parr- tome sorvice. TJnfortunaielv ' ihe practitioner who so unexpectedly j called everybody's attention to the use of ! j the spur out here was fat-ally injured in the ' 1 race, so that whether he received the elec- ! trie shock inste xd of t!m» horse, or whether j the horse got the shock suddenly and i plung«d in a way to unseat the rider who ' had set the battery in motion, may never j Ys known. These who have seen the con- ; trivanco say that a battery — a small one, of I course — is concealed under the jockey's , j jacket, one set of wiros running down to the j 1 wrists r.nd others down the boots, connect- j I ii:y with the spurs. Tha vidc-r easily con- J j ti ; slß the switch, and can regulate it from ' ! his wrist, while the wires are so arranged that tk© apparatus can be dieconn«cted at the knee. But the dope 13 what Australian racecourse man-agers should b© ©specially keen in excluding from their courses. Many j of chose who keep the sport alive make no i secret of their belief that the praccice of . doping doss exist within tbe CJommonwealth, arj alao that We&t Australia ha.s not a. ! monopoly of it. I