Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS’ GAZETTE WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDA THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1900.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 523, 27 December 1900, Page 10

Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS’ GAZETTE WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDA THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1900.

MODE ABOUT AMERICA.

It is seldom now that the weekly issue of the Racing Calendar ”, makes its appearance without

some reference to an alteration in the rules of racing, says an English contemporary. Old rules do not suffice to meet the changes and developments that are constantly , being made, many of them, it must be confessed, due to the stress of American competition in the direction of blood stock, trainers and jockeys. Last week, at Newmarket, an important meeting of the Jockey Club was held, and the proceedings taking place at it were published in an extra “ Calendar ” recently. The business transacted and the speeches made provide much food for reflection, and it would appear that we are to have some stirring times in the way of legislation in view of the continued successes of American-bred and American-trained horses and of American jockeys. A very proper measure passed was that which restricts breeding allowances to produce bred in the United Kingdom of a stallion in the United Kingdom. Hitherto animals bred in America, where the covering fees are on a totally different scale to what they are with us, have been placed at a great advantage over home bred horses, because if the American stallion, for whose produce a very appreciable breeding allowance is claimed, were stationed in England, his fee would be such that the allowance would either be materially reduced or made to disappear altogether. Animals bred in certain countries on the Continent possessed similar advantages, paternal governments stepping in to aid the breeder with valuable stallions at very low fees. These preferential advantages were most unfair to English breeders, and the Jockey Club has done well in sweeping them away. This rule was framed for the purpose of protecting the homebred horse ; another was avowedly for the protection of our jockeys from the too successful American competition. The insertion of an addition to the apprentice allowance rule, designed to extend the allowance five pounds, to remain in force for the first year only of the apprenticeship, to all handicaps as well as to selling races, looks harmless enough on the face of it, but Lord Durham, the proposer, turned the occasion.into an opportunity for speaking his mind very openly on the, to him, vexed question of American invasion.