Followers Of Racing Game Reply To Mr John Rowe.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19118, 10 July 1930, Page 11

Followers Of Racing Game Reply To Mr John Rowe.

CHALLENGE HIS STATEMENT THAT BOOKMAKERS ARE ORGANISED. “ What will any person of standing think of all that stuff about the bookmaker going in for house-to-house canvassing? I put it to you, how long would he get away with it? The first anti-horse racing man he struck would put him away. The police would be advised—oh, it is all rubbish to talk as he has!” That was the response of one man who is well-known in racing circles, to the statement made by- Mr John Rowe, vicepresident of the New Zealand Trotting Conference, at Wellington yesterday.

“ It is news to me, and I have been in close touch with racing for a good many years,” was the comment of another man. “I am inclined to think that the Auckland telescope has again been playing tricks with those who have focused it on Christchurch. If there is an organisation of bookmakers in this city we would have known about it before this. Mr Rowe gives me the impression that he thinks it is a sin to jjrefer a bookmaker to the totalisator. He describes the bookmaker as a parasite, but on whose money do the racing clubs exist?” When Mr Rowe’s statement was brought under the attention of a prominent police official it drew the remark that: “Anybody who says there are 150 bookmakers in Auckland is talking through his hat! His story looks like an appeal for benevolence. As far as Christchurch goes nobody is allowed to do as he likes here.” “ One is a ‘Bookie.’” “ Where two or three are gathered together, one of them is a ‘ bookie,’ ” said another police official. “ There is no way of preventing people from betting, but I do not think things are as bad as Mr Rowe saj's, for I’ve certainly not run up against any evidence of an organised illegal brotherhood.” Another man stated that the volume of betting that went on in New Zealand provided the Government with an opportunity of increasing its revenue. If the business paid the bookmakers, it should also pay the Government. “Why not,” he asked, “ make the post office a totalisator? If the bookie is a parasite this scheme would soon get rid of him.” An Ex-Bookmaker’s Story. “ Once I was a bookmaker and 1

did not feel a bit like a parasite,” said another man who was interviewed. “ Everything was all right and I was getting a lot of profit that would nevei have come my way in the ordinary course of events; but I struck a run of bad luck after some months and was cleaned right out. How 1 would have liked the co-operation ot certain kind-hearted owners to help me along! With that I might have been a rich man. Mr Rowe seems to have taken all the things that a bookmaker has not got and put them up as the things he has got. Most of the things he has said are ridiculous.” RADIO COMPANY DOES NOT CATER FOR BETTING. “ Ever since the racing authorities imposed the ban on broadcasting descriptions of events from the course, the New Zealand Radio Broadcasting Company, so far as it possibly could, has adhered to the wishes of the racing authorities in refraining from broadcasting actual descriptions of the races j while they were being run,” stated a head office official of the broadcasting company yesterday. “ The company, nevertheless, was of opinion that, in the interests of the large section of its listeners interested in racing and trotting events, the general details of the metropolitan meetings should be broad cast, and arrangements were made for starters, scratchings, positions at the post and names of the placed horses at metropolitan meetings to be broadcast wherever this was practicable. There was never any question of broadcasting for the benefit of the bookmakers, as is suggested by Mr Rowe, the whole position being considered by the company from the point of view of what it conceived to be its duty to sporting listeners. There can be little doubt that the great mass of the public will be fully appreciative of the wholly disinlerested attitude of the company in regard to this matter, and will strongly

resent the unwarrantable imputations which appear to have been made by a responsible member of the Trotting Conference. . ... - “ Those imputations are as fallacious as they are unjust, and that they should have been made is all the more unaccountable in view of the fact that the person, making them must have known that the company’s policy in relation to the broadcasting of important sporting events, and the reasons tinderlying that policy, have been fully placed before the conference. “Further than that, members ot the executive of the conference have themselves repudiated the suggestion that the disinclination of the conference to permit the broadcasting of descriptions of metropolitan meetings was m any way associated with the consideration as to whether the broadcasting service would, or would not, benefit tne bookmaking fraternity. , “ The company’s attitude was prompted solely with a view to keeping the listening public in touch with the latest results of this particular sport and there was no more intention ot catering for the interests of a third partv such as the bookmakers m handling racing broadcasts than m conducting broadcast descriptions ot football, boxing or any other branch ot sport.” _