TIC-TAC

Southland Times, Issue 18968, 15 June 1923, Page 10

TIC-TAC

HOW RACING MEN TRANSMIT INFORMATION.

“Tic-tac” is to racing men what signals were to the Army in the Great War. Witheut the wonderfully efficient system of signalling known as “tic-tac” it would hardly be possible to carry on the great business of horse-racing to-day, writes a racegoer in the Daily Mail. The “tic-tac” operator is not the noisy hooligan he is so often described; in reality he is a highly skilled, responsible, and industrious person. Frequently thousands of pounds depend upon a few passes of his white-gloved hand, and when his activities are linked with the telephone the public are indebted to him for quick racing results and other news on the course.

Unnoticed, high up in an out of the way corner cf the stand, the chief “tictac” operator works with field glasses and hands, usually white gloved in order to convey his signals more clearly to a telephonist, who is in trunk communication during racing hours with the office of a news agency in London. So perfect is the code of signals that the “tic-tac” man is able to send the names of runners and jockeys while they are going in from the frame in front of the enclosures the various betting changes, the' “off” incidents such as the fall of a horse in a steeplechase, and finally the result and the distance by which the race was won. It is thinks to him that all this ticks out upon the tape machine in thousands of London * offices, perhaps hundreds of miles way. while the events are actually happening. It is by the “tic-tac” that the betting odds in the cheaper rings are regulated to figures approximating those obtaining in Tattersall’s. Great speed and accuracy are needed in this work, for the betting changes are many and rapid, and unless he be accurately . and constantly informed in this connection a bookmaker in the cheap ring may easily fall into the error of laying long odds against a horse which is being heavily backed in Tattersail’s. He would then be forced to “hedge” at a loss, or run a disproportionate risk. Hedging between the various rings is also done by “tic-tac” the significance of one or two movements of the “tic-tac” operator’s hand often meaning anything from £5 to as many hundreds. At places such as Goodwood, where the nearest telephone is beyond the boundary of the ducal park, the signals are actually conveved by relays from the famous Trundell Hill. In damp weather this hill is subject to banks of cicud and on occasion the “tic-tac” men have to dodge the clouds as it were, in order to get the’r results and other news through to London.