A- Horse That Is Famous!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 793, 14 October 1929, Page 13

A- Horse That Is Famous !

ALL SMOKE WARMED MANY ROADS, BUT HE NEVER BURNED A TRACK Story Of A Sensational Ring-In DOWN t ac road near Washdyke a jet black horse, pretty to watch. loped along on an easy rein. On his back sat a little man bchirffi an incongruously big pip?, from which came much smoke, cumulus clouds of it . . . and the jet black horse loped along. Every clay man and horse and pipe went homewards along the road near Washdykc, and the man became known by the soubriquet of “All Smoke.'’ The horse v.as nameless. One day, however, the man told his friends that the horse had been entered for a point-to-point steeplechase. He was persuaded# to name the horse All Smoke. He did so. The licrse ran third. Next day man, pipe, and horse went along the same road in the same way.

Carbine. Desert Gold ami Gloaming j ran to victory and won equestrian immortality to the cheering of crowded i grandstands on half a hundred race- ; courses; but All Smoke got there just as surely merely by loping along the road near Washdyke and running third in a steeplechase. He became a mystery horse and talked of from end to end of New Zealand as one of the central figures in the most sensational ringing-in exposure of the New Zealand Turf. “All Smoke,” a Trotter! All Smoke wasn’t wosth his feed as j a trotter. But All Smoke started to j get among the dividends in classy com- j pany. Some one had taken his name . and his number was hoisted on the j beard. He had changed hands. Up at j Otahv.hu the bogus All Smoke broke I down and he was sent to a boiling down works, his hide being kept. Then something happened over two j other perfectly innocent horses, Eulius i and Willie Lincoln, and the inquiries 1 of Chief-Detective T. Gibson of that j day took him to a home in the suburbs i of Christchurch. A woman was inter- j viewed. “What are those two horses in the j paddock,” asked the detective. “That's a hack, and there’s All I Smoke,” replied the woman. The detective took both horses, because “All Smoke” had died at Otahuhu I Thus did one plot uncover another. But the story of finding the real All Smoke, was noTer told in the course of the long anti sensational trial which followed. Ninety witnesses were called for the prosecution, the investigations were carried out from Otahuhu to Invercargill, and sittings of the Court were necessary in Dunedin and Christchurch. The costs were enormous. The law 7 took its stern course with those involved and many punishments were meted out. > When the Supreme Court trial was held in Christchurch there were two exhibits of chief importance. On the floor of the court was the black hide, dyed before death, of the AH Smoke which had been killed at Otahuhu, and grazing on the lawn in front of the court was the real, veritable, and only All Smoke whose offence had been in running third in a steeplechase and loping along the road near Washdyke. Branded With Symbol of Shame. Branded with shame, the letters N.Z. reversed as the symbol of disqualification by the New Zealand Trotting Association, All Smoke browses in a paddock at St# Albans, flicking his jet

black shanks with a long tail . . . and the men who knew him once arc forgetting. He is the property of Mr \Y. E. Simes. who bought him as a lady's hack for £lO. Since All Smoke was arrested the horse has had a varied career. He has lived up to the belief hold by racing men that he is a descendant of thal great galloper, Sou’-Wester. Even when held in a paddock on the Middle Lincoln Road before the trial in which his identity was so gravely questioned he jumped fcnees and made excursions among the lucerne paddocks tor half-a-milc around. Later Mr Simes. with permission, put the horse over the C.J.C. Steeplechase course. All Smoke never baulked an obstacle, lie was not an exhibition jumper, so he-was trained to please judges. At the 1927 Metropolitan Show ho was unplaced in a jumping contest, but gained third in a consolation event. Yet at Little River Show in the same year he won the maiden hunters* class against a field of 17, his first win of any sort. But like G. K. Chesterton’s Donkey, All Smoke could say : Fools! For I had niv hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears. And palms before my feet. Paradoxically, it was All Smoke, with his brand of shame, which, at the request of the police, and ridden by a constable, headed the procession which welcomed the Duke of York to Christchurch. And in the recent procession of students in the city it was the same All Smoke loping along at the head of the annual burlesque. In between times the jet-black horse, as the mount of the clerk of course, has cocked its ears reminiscently as the band has blared at the Metropolitan Trotting Ground. Three times has he got into a pubic. 4 pound and for three weeks no one could catch him on the road. He has been in demand at several military camps because of his superioi movements. Only- or.ee was he tried r« harness; he kicked the sulky to pieces, jumped a corrugated iron fenced scarred a foreleg on a willow stump. All Smoke was never a trotter. Only a false rail holds him to his home paddock at the present time—a bonj jumper. He is 11 years old now. Branded with nhamc ... All Smoke browses in a paddock at St. Albans, flicking his jet-black shanks . . . and the men wlio knew him once axe for* gel ting-