RACING CONFERENCE.

Colonist, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11678, 13 July 1906, Page 3

RACING CONFERENCE.

Wellington, July 12. The Racing Conference opened here this morning, Sir George Clifford presiding. In reviewing the work of the year, the Chairman said the most noteworthy features of the season now closing had been the increased interest of the public in the sport of racing, and the decision of the leading clubs to refrain from licensing bookmakers had been largely instrumental in achieving these results. In all essentials they might defy criticism. Twenty years' participation in the sport had convinced him that no man pursuing it within his menas, and as a pastime, safeguarded by their present rules, need blush at his connection with it. They must, however, acknowledge the presence of accessories over which they bad little or no control, and from which it was} the duty of the State to rid them by the enforcement of existing laws. Never, perhaps, in the history of racing was any country better supplied with the means of severing from lacing every objectionable adjunct. They had sufficient owners of probity in;whom the public had confidence ; £they had means of innocent speculation which could harm only the stupidly reckless; they had a Board^of Control in this Conference whose steady aim was the removal of abuses. They repelled bookmakers and professional gamblers from the courses, and for the full realisation of the ideal of clean sport they only asked for an effective execution of the law, which surely they had a just claim to demand. The usual statistics afforded evidence of the growing popularity of racing. In conclusion, the Chairman suggested that the time had come when the Conference might set up a committee, with power to avail itself of the machinery to deal with suspected malpractices. 8 There seemed no valid reason why the j licensing of owners should not be j entrusted to a Committee.