Sporting Review THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1892.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume III, Issue 114, 29 September 1892, Page 4

Sporting Review THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1892.

A question bids fair to be threshed out in the South Island which it is quite time was definitely settled. We refer to the liability of investors on the totalisator on horses which win races and are then disqualified on technical grounds. At the Ashburton Hunt Club’s meeting about a month back there was the inevitable hack race on the programme, open to horses that had never competed in a hack race previously. Emperor won, and a protest was entered against him on the ground that he was not eligible to compete, as he had previously been entered for hack races. The stewards upheld the protest —they had no alternative, records of Emperor having started in hack races being produced —disqualified Emperor, and gave the stakes to the second horse. Thereupon several of the investors on Emperor in the totalisator clamoured for a return of the money invested by them, but the stewards could not listen to them, as the rules of the totalisator (which by the way are incorporated with the Rules of Racing) distinctly state that dividends follow stakes. One of the investors on Emperor subsequently wrote to the committee of the Canterbury Jockey Club, under whose jurisdiction the Ashburton Hunt Club’s meeting was held, asking them to order the A.H.C. to refund the money invested on Emperor. The C.J.C.’s committee have referred the matter back to the Hunt Club for explanation, they apparently not being able to find any precedent for over-riding the totalisator rules. But it does really seem rather hard that those people who invested on Emperor should lose their money. One of the most fundamental of the laws of betting is that “ in all bets there must be a possibility to win when the bet is made ; you cannot lose when you cannot win.” This was entirely the predicament of Emperor’s backers —they could

not win because the horse was ineligible to compete in the race. While we do not see how in the face of the Rules of the Totalisator the Ashburton Hunt Club could have taken the money invested on Emperor out of the pool and returned it to the backers of that horse, the question of principle is a wide one, and we think it is time that the rights of backers who lose their money over a horse on whom they could not have won —as in the case of Emperor s supporters —should be legislated upon. Backers cannot be expected to carry the performances of every horse —and especially a so-called “ hack in their heads. The clubs by using the totalisator openly invite the public to bet, and the public are entitled to have a chance of winning, the same as they would in an ordinary bet with a bookmaker. The Totalisator Rules in this respect stand sadly in want of amendment, and we hope the Emperor case will be the means of the law being altered so that backers will not lose their money in the way they did at Ashburton.

A peculiar case of disqualification occurred at the Otago Hunt Club races, held under the auspices of the Dunedin Jockey Club the other day. In the Trotting Handicap Dexterina, ridden by her owner, a Mr. McMullen, came in first, but was protested against on rather uncommon grounds. It appeared that on his way back to scale, after he had won the race, a trotting boot which Dexterina had been wearing during the contest and which she had got rid of ’while trotting, was handed to by Mr. McMullen by an employe of the Club named Conn, and received by him. A protest was lodged against Mr. McMullen on the ground that he had committed a breach of the rule which states that “ if a jockey touch (except accidentally) any other person or thing other than his own equipments before weighing-in, his horse may be disqualified.” When the stewards met to consider the protest, Conn acknowledged that he had handed the boot to Mr. McMullen, but he said that he was not aware he had done anything wrong. Mr. McMullen’s explanation was that he did not know the boot had been dropped, and that when a man approached to hand him something he received it without knowing what it was till he had it in his hand. The stewards, however, decided to disqualify Dexterina for the race and give the stakes to Lizzie, who had finished second. Hard lines this for Mr. McMullen, we think. Certainly he committed a technical breach of the rule, but it was done with no fraudulent intent so far as we know, and it will be observed that the rule only says that the offending party “may be” disqualified. The power given to the stewards is a discretionary and not a mandatory one, and for this reason we are strongly of opinion that in the face of all the circumstances, the stewards should have exercised their discretionary power, have let Mr. McMullen off with a caution for his ignorance, and have given Dexterina the stakes.