Sporting & Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS' GAZETTE. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, December 17, 1896 HANDICAPPING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VII, Issue 334, 17 December 1896, Page 6

Sporting & Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS' GAZETTE. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, December 17, 1896 HANDICAPPING.

The gentleman who accepts the position of handicapper should certainly not be a sensitive man, or a man upon whom adverse criticism is likely to have a serious and sad effect, for no official connected with the Sport of Kings can look forward with more certainty to abuse than the man who endeavours, by the conscientious adjustment of weight, to bring about a dead heat between a field of horses. It is not the true sportsman who makes the handicapper the target of abuse, but those who have, by running byes, angled to get their horse in at a weight which would enable him to hold the rest of the field safe. When the angler fails to thus blind the handicapper he is one of the loudest in his condemnation, and as the losers among the owners are always more numerous than the winners he frequently gets the majority on his side, and a petition or complaint against the handicapper finds no difficulty in gaining signatures. It is very probable that handicappers are frequently wrong, but they do not receive that assistance from stewards they have a right to expect. The steward may see a horse run palpably stiff, but no notice is taken, and the owner, when he is not carpeted, expects the handicapper to take the weight off. But the handicapper has seen what the easy-going steward has shut his eyes to, and the weight is kept up, and the reward of his firmness is abuse, complaint, and petition Among the complainants there can be no doubt there are honest men, some suffering from a real and some from an imagined grievance, but whether the grievance be real or imaginary, would it not be well to consider whether our system of handicapping by one man may not be improved upon ? Mr Evett has his detractors here, but at the present time handicappers almost all over the world have uncompromising critics. If Mr Evett has been complained against, so also has the New South Wales handicapper, the Victorian handicapper, and many others that could be instanced. And in England special meetings of the jockey clubs have been held to consider the subject, but at the time that the last mail left nothing practical had been done. The English Jockey Club has appointed a committee to report on the subject, and the following are some of their sugges tions : —l. No handicapper shall handicap for more than one meeting during a week. 2 All entries for handicaps for which the weights are to appear before the meeting are to be on the sheet calendar at least a week before the weights are published. 3. And for those handi-

caps for which the weights are to appear during a meeting there shall be at least twenty-four hours between the time of closing entries and the issue ol the weights. 4. The handicapper shall not hold any other office, and must attend the meeting personally. The last-named is about the only suggestion of value to New Zealand ; but in New South Wales it has been suggested that the handicapping should be done by a committee of three. The difficulty, however, in New South Wales is that it would be impossible to get three men who would consent to work with one another on such a committee, and it is reasonable to suppose that the same difficulty would arise here.