RACING IN RUSSIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 212, 10 September 1935, Page 3

RACING IN RUSSIA

STATE-OWNED HORSES POPULAR TROTTING SPORTS. BOLSHEVIKS LIKE A “FLUTTER.”’ The old pure Bolsheviks hesitated before allowing class brothers to engage in the •'unnatural rivalries” of the football field. They had no such scruples about horse racing. By 1921 trotting events and by 1924 ordinary flat-racing were again in full swing. With the opening of the present, sum nnr season 900 horses were stabled round Moscow’s unlovely but well managed “hippodrome.” Horses and course alike belong to the heavily subsidised Central State Horse Tru>t, j which also controls 10 other big courses and most of the leading stud tarms in Russia and Russian Asia with racing stables attached. Every evening there is racing in Moscow. Every sixth day (Russia rests one day in six instead o< uui day and a-half in seven', a drab but goodhumoured crowd ul the real Russian stamp —solid and easy going once they escape polities- -pend up to !'• hour" on end steadily’ betting small sums on j State-owned horses at the Stale | “tot’e” boxes. Trotting, the principal j sport, goes on all the year round, with | brief gaps at changes of season. For climatic reasons ordinary flat | racing only lasts a four mouths’ sum- , mcr season. This necessitates a differ- : cut system ol' training. For the rest of lhe year the horses are kept at th'’ racing stables of the Sla'e stud?. Therefore, when racing in Mu-cow. lhev preserve their independent "stable (•harai-ter. with their own trainers and stable boys, and even their own stable jockeys; hut all expenses during the actual racing season are paid by the Moscow course. These* horse.- are l Lnglish thorough i breds. although for experimental pur I poses high nix'd animals nut pure iircd i are sometimes ruti against them Ihe y | rare on a dirt track, round the.* outside j of the trotting course, and the races ate usually sandwiched in between [ trolling events. The Central .'State Horse Trust has of recent vears impe>rteel seve*ral hun dred Lnglish t horughbreds from France. Duly. Germany and I’olaml netiie direr'ly from England. They never race these imported horses, but onlv the'ir progeny. t)ue of the likeliest thiee year olds this year was s'red by a winner of the Italian Derby. But although finely’ trained, they arc not j quite up to British, French or American standards. T'ne Soviet IDerby is usually run on August 6 for a prize) of 50,00(1 roubles (about £so(lv. which goes to the winning stable for ‘'improving the life* of lhe. stalT.’’ There is also a .;o\*alle*d | "trotting Derby, ’' with a prize* of i 20,000 roubles, and about ”><• smaller I prizes annually. •