BROKE HIS NECK.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 600, 2 November 1932, Page 10

BROKE HIS NECK.

Jockey Who Won Melbourne Cup Yesterday. PLANS TO RIDE 1000 WINNERS. (By VIGILANT). On the eve of departure for Sydney on November 23, 1929, I delayed to watch just one more race at the Epsom racecourse at Mordialloc, near Melbourne, ‘-and afterwards wished I had not. The race was watched in company with Andrew Ferguson, who rode two V.R.C. Grand National Hurdle winners in the ’eighties, and Mr Claude Grice, the noted Australian amateur rider.

Bill Duncan rode a horse called Quick Reward. As he came near us, we heard Duncan calling out for room. Quick Reward was a long-striding horse and the field was packed. Immediately opposite us, Quick Reward came down. Duncan appeared to be kicked and rolled along by horse after horse. “ God, he’s killed,” exclaimed Ferguson. Mr Grice said afterwards that he had turned away. “It made me feel sick,” he remarked, and he himself had had many a tumble in races and in the hunting field. There was a rush across the track. I remember noting the jockeys Bob Lewis and Frank Dempsey being foremost to render assistance. Later came the bad news, Duncan had suffered a broken neck. Later again, the bulletin that the spinal cord was intact and that he would recover. Of course he would never ride again. Well, he did not for many months, but it was the same Bill Duncan who won the Melbourne Cup on Peter Pan yesterday.

Two years ago, in the course of a chat at his pleasant home at Caulfield, Duncan said: “I am nearly 31 now. In four years’ time I shall retire, and when I do I have finished with racing. I hope to have ridden 1000 winners by then.” Last June, his total was 821 winners, and he has added a-good many since.

I have known Duncan since the days when he was a small boy apprenticed to the late Jos. Carr at Caulfield. He is not very big, some ways now, but he is a pocket Hercules. As game a rider as Australia has ever known, Duncan—like most of us—may have some faults, but he has got a whole lot of virtues. He has frequently been in trouble with the stipendiary stewards for crossing too quickly and kindred racing offences involving over-eager-ness to win, but the stewards would be the first to tell you that that is all they have against him. He is the principal jockey of one of the greatest betting stables in Australia (not Frank M’Grath’s) and has its implicit trust. It was in 1918 that Bill Duncan won his other Melbourne Cup. The horse was Night Watch and the weight 6st 91b. You will gather that Bill was not very big then. Characteristically, he got suspended later at the meeting for a month for taking a chance and crossing too quickly. WIN AND A PLACE. Conference Drafting New Regulations. The Executive Committee of the New Zealand Racing Conference is drafting regulations to permit clubs to use the win and place method of totalisator betting. It is anticipated that the regu- | lations will be approved in tinie to allow I of clubs running their meetings under ■ this system toward the end of the year. | As in the case of the three dividends j and tw’o dividends in five-horse races, the system of win and place will be optional.