RACING.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16174, 27 December 1924, Page 16 (Supplement)

RACING.

BEASON'S FIXTURES. -Dec. 26 and 30~Jan. 1 and 2—Auefc land Racing Club. >-•■- Jan. 1, 2—Stratford ..'RtC/.;.:;? ,7,',' Jan! 1, 2 —Hawke's Bay, J.G: ;...,.: Jan. 1, 2—Marton.T.C.:,,: Jan. 1,2— Wairarapaß.C.',.;.,. ... Jan. 13, Jan. 17—Dargaville Racing Club Jan. 20, U— Wellington R..C. Jan. 21, 22—Foxton R.C. , Jan. 24— Dargaville R.C. Jan. 28, 29—Pahiatua R.C. Jan. 29, 31 —Takapuna R.C. Feb. 4, s—Egmont R.C. Feb. 5, 7—Gisborne R.C. Feb. 7—Te "uiti Racing Club Feb. 11—Rotorua Racing Club Feb. Racing Club. Feb; 21—Ngaruawahia Racing. Club Feb . 27—Opotikl Jockey Club ;■ , Feb. 28— Jockey Club

HIGH-HANDED ACTION. The stewards of the Winton Jockey ' Club took a very high-handed action at I their race meeting, held last week in C subjecting the representatives of the I Southland News to the indignity or, ■ being ejected from the stewards' stand I (writes "Sentinel" in the Otago Daily Times). They had previously been '■'. debarred from using the press room. I It is understood thab the, club or some . : of the officials took umbrage at the i report of last season's meeting in the : \ Southland News because the margins ' ' stated in the paper to have existed ber tween some of the placed horses did not quite coincide with the official ver- "' diet. If that is all the stewards have ' to - grieve about their action is too paltry for words, and calls for severe condemnation. , It is.certainly anything but a sporting attitude to adopt over a difference of opinion in connection'with the result of a race. It also ' seems obvious that if the report of the Winton races does not plea* the /stewards, then the, press .representatives are not required at the meeting. This is really an intolerable state of ' affairs, and sounds like a deliberate •: attempt to gag the press. It has long : been recognised in certain cases that if a pressman's report or comment on : what has taken place during a race :: meeting doe's not please the officials -' of a club, some of ( them make it a perj v sonal matter and endeavour ,to get even in some form or other with the offending The. action ,of the Winton Jockey Club is tantamount, to-the, disqualification ,-6f :^the' : two pressmen" concerned, 'and; .unless: ; y.ery good.grounds exist for such;unsportsmanlike procedure, it is-the .duty of the Racing Conference.to hold';an inquiry into the matter. • -.; ; ,/;■;'?.

/ ; JOTTINGS.,, . , > There will he trotting nt Alexandra Park on Monday and Wednesday. The Manawatu R.G. will conclude its programme on Monday. The Ellerslie Carnival will be continued on Tuesday and Thursday, and on Friday. r Hawke’s Bay, Marton, Wairarapa and Stratford R.C.’s will hold meetings on Thursday and Friday next, while . it he Southland R.C. will race on Friday .' ■". and .Saturday. , ... . .... • The Jumpers’ Flat, Race at the Go- , • ford (N.S.W.)* meeting-last week \vas ;• • won easily by the Okawa bred gelding Dialogue (Demosthenes—Tete-a-tete), .i. .who. was carrying top weight, list. Reports from AmVralia state that King’s Trumpeter has been shaping badly in his recent engagements. B. ‘Jarden, of Christchurch, hands the light harness trainers’ winniC® list It is intended to hold an official opening of the; Wellington Racing Club’s new buildings at the summer meeting in January, when the public ... stands at present under construction will be completed. Mr H. A. Rhind, the owner of Giantkiller, has purchased the 4-year-old Youte (by The Welkin from Audulusite) from Mr G. D. Greenwood. On the conclusion of the Auckland V Racing Club’s meeting, G. Young will’ take up his residence at Sydney. ] It is stated that Heroic may shortly ] find his way to England, but he can- ' not race till his 12 months’ disqualify i cation is up. The Wellington and Manawatu Clubs 1 have come to an arrangement in re-' : gard to the dates for their autumn meetings. The former club will race 1 during the last week in. March and the j Manawatu R.C. a week later. 1 In her last three starts in Australia 1 the New . Zealand bred Lovesign has : finished second. ■»-- “Sentinel” maintains that a rule should be made to prohibit steeplechasing and' hurdle racing during the summer months, when the going is so i hard as to impart unnecessary danger to these branches of sport. The new regulations framed by the Conference regarding the number of horses which may race on the various Dominion courses within the safety ■ i margin, gives Te Rapa an all round limit of 25. Ellerslie’s maximum is 19 and 20. Prior to yesterday’s racing, J. Barry was at the top of the jockeys’ list for the season with 34 winning rides, While C. Emerson was next with 26. \ It is a far cry from Randwick to Winton, but to show that it is not an unbridgeable distance it may be mentioned that George Young won the •A-J.C. Derby on Cupidon three years ago, and the same combination got together at the recent Winton meeting 1 . ■' / The well performed Australian hurdler Confessor broke down badly in both front legs when competing in the Hurdle Race at Randwick. He will probably not race again. Charley’s Mount, the winner of this year’s Cesarewitch Stakes of 1525 sovs, 2i miles, was - got by Charles O’Malley from Sunny Ridge,' by Sunstar from Monteur, by Ladas from Kermesse. Ladas was got by Hampton from Illuminate, and Charles O’Malley is a son of Desmond and Goody Two Shoes, a mare by Isinglass from Sandal. The chief secretary (Mr C. W. Oakes), speaking at the opening of City Tattersall’s new club rooms in Sydney recently, remarked that there were 485 licensed racecourses in New South Wales. The Government, for registration fees, received £1261. The betting taxes amounted to £68,000 in twelve months, while bookmakers’ taxes brought in £40,000, and admission to racecourses £143,013. The totalisator revenue was £266,000. The Australian jockey, Frank Bullock, who has been associated for some time with Alec Taylor’s. training establishment in the Old Country, won three races in succession recently for that trainer at Newmarket. The winners were Lord Astor’s bay colt St. Germans (Limekiln Stakes), Lord Astor’s bay filly Saucy Sue (Criterion Stakes), and the bay colt Scapino .(Rutland Handicap). .....

At the West Australian Turf Club's latest meeting;- the Nursery Handicap was won by Brownface, a bay colt, by imported Linacre from the Maoriland mare Charlotte, by Charlemagne 11. from Nithsevo, by Stepniak. Despite the fact that the streets of American cities are crowded with motor vehicles, which tends to create the impression that the horse is doomed to disappear, an American points out that such is not the case. Statistics, based upon the census, show that while the normal rate of increase has not been maintained, there are nearly 300,000 more horses in America than there were 20 years ago, and that the number of mules had increased by 2,370,000 during the same period, notwithstanding the fact that during the Great War there were shipped abroad more than 950,000 horses and 345,000 mules.

Quite a different "paper" proposition, says, "Poseidon" in the Sydney Sun, is Top Gallant, a highly performed candidate. on the English Turf. He was recently purchased by Mr Clarence Hailey, on behalf of the New South Wales owner and breeder, Mr A. P. Wade. Although Top Gallant was not in the classics his wins and placings show that he is a horse of high™class, his latest winning performance being in the Crawford Handicap, 6 furlongs, at Newmarket, in which he carried the steadier of ldst. He was bred in ,1920 by Lord Penrhyn, and is by Swynford from Galante, by Sundridge from Galantine, by Gallinule from Valant, a half-sister to the grand-dam of the brilliant Claro. Frank Dempsey, who is to leave for England on January;. 20 with a retainer to ride for Sir Arthur Hyde, brother to the late A.J.C. Stipendiary Steward, Abel Hyde, has been riding in Victoria for nearly ten years, and five time's has headed the list of winning jockeys, while his chief rival, W. Duncan, has been,©a.top three times;

1 jempsey, who had his first winning ride in February, 1915, has ridden 292 J winners, 214 seconds and 190 thirds. Duncan, since he rode his first winner in December, 1916, has ridden 212 winners, 202 seconds and 18G thirds.

A famous English trainer of racehorses, Mr George Lambton, in "Men and Horses I Have Known," has published an extremely interesting book, one that need not fear comparison with any other reminiscences of the'-turf, for it has a strong human interest, and is well planned and excellently written. It was the author who opened the 1 eyes of the racing authorities to the evils of doping. To prove his case he told the stewards that he intended to dope one of his horses. "I obtained six dopes from a well-known veterinary surgeon. They were not injected with a needle, but just given out of a bottle. Their effect on the horse was astonishing. I used five of them, and had four winners and a second. Not one of these horses had shown any form throughout the year. One of them, Buy Lopez, who had previously entirely defeated the efforts of the best jockeys in England, ran away with the Lincoln Autumn Handicap with a stable-boy up, racing Jike the most honest horse in the world." By the following year, doping had been made a criminal offence, the penalty being "warning off." ■'■'■■'Mr-G.' P. Mackay stated to a Sydney pressman that his great horse Beauford had just been put into work by S. Killick at Newcastle in preparation for racing in the autumn. After the gelding's break-down in the Hill Stakes in 1923 one attempt was made to train him, but his leg went again. Then he was fired and sent out to the paddock many months, ago. The Newcastle veterinary surgeon, Mr R. V*. Davis, who performed the operation, is sanguine that the ; brilliant son of Blueford will stand a preparation this time. Lovers of a great galloper will join in the hope that Beauford will be thoroughly fit to measure strides again with the best in the land. If Gloaming is brought back to Australia in the autumn, as Mr Greenwood says he will be, and Beauford is in form, the pair will be able to settle the much-de-bated question of their relative galloping ability. They are, however,

likely to 'find a young prince in the lists if Mr Corteen completes the sale of Heroic. Apart from Heroic there is The Night Patrol to be reckoned with, as he proved in Melbourne during the spring that he is a great galloper up to a mile and a quarter. Beauford's two-year-old brother, Glen Garry, has.just been broken in by Killick, and is ready to go into work. Much interest will be taken in him. Blueford has -thrown a rare succession of winners, and racing men will be anxious to see whether Beauford's brother can go fast. Tic-tackers are in evidence at near-

ly every race meeting. Randwick is not free from them and only recently the A.J.C. detective, T. Makme, had occasion to remove one from the course. It was an ingenious arrangement the man had for telegraphing the prices in the paddock into the Leger reserve. Usually it is done by signals either by handkerchief or signs with the hands, such as touching the right or left elbow, pulling the nose, left or right ear, and so on as might be pre-arranged. The person caught last week, however, did not act in that way. He wore a large belt under his coat, with fairly big numbers on it, and he would unostentatiously walk down from the betting ring to the Leger fence, and display a number on the belt, which would convey the required information. Another contrivance was recently discovered on the west end of the Leger stand, which is a double decker. A person was stationed there, and in communication with another on the top of the hill at Kensington, in view of the Leger stand. The man on the stand had a long stick with wires on it, with which he could hoist the number, while the people were intent on seeing the placed numbers on the official semaphore.- -It is surmised that the person on the hill was in communication with a nearby telephone and that country books or starting price merchants were exploited.