Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, November 19, 1903. FOUL RIDING IN THE CUP.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 715, 19 November 1903, Page 6

Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, November 19, 1903. FOUL RIDING IN THE CUP.

It is a thousand pities that the latest New Zealand Cup will probably be remembered in years to come, not for the performances of the horses engaged in it, but for the amount of foul riding that occurred during the great two-mile event. The reports of the race state that when Achilles, Wairiki and Canteen were about to put in their finishing runs McCombe, who was riding the latter, deliberately pulled his horse across Achilles, who was bumped on to Wairiki, those two being so badly interfered with as to completely spoil their chances. So bad was the cross that the stewards took action on their own initiative, and disqualified McCombe for a period of two years. By some inscrutable process of reasoning, however, they came to the conclusion that the result of the race was not affected, and, instead of awarding the race to Wairiki, allowed the judge’s placings to stand. It is small wonder to learn that this remarkable decision of the stewards was freely questioned, us well it might be, the geueral opinion being that a grave mistake had been committed. Rule 92 reads as follows:—“If in running for any race, one horse shall jostle or cross another, such horse and every horse belonging to the same owner, or in which he shall have a share, running in the same race, may be dis qualified from winning the race, whether such jostle or cross happened by the sweiving of his horse, or by foul and

careless riding of the jockey, or otherwise, and where one horse crosses the track of another it may be disqualified, unless it be two clear lengths or more before the horse whose track it crosses; and if such cross or jostle shall be proved to have happened through the foul riding of the jockey, he shall be subject to such punishment as the stewards may think fit to inflict.” Surely nothing could be clearer than this. It is not disputed that the case was a particularly bad one, both Achilles and Wairiki being knocked out of their strides, and if ever the rule should have been enforced this would seem to have been the time. Another case of foul riding occurred when Cameron, who had the mount on Boseal, purposely bumped Wairiki, and it .would certainly seem that the latter horse had more than his due allowance of the ill-luck that was going. Cameron was disqualified for twelve months, so that it is evident this was also a very bad case. In both cases the rule should have been enforced in its entirety, for if not of what possible use can it ever be ? Granted that it would have been exceedingly hard lines for that straight-going sportsman, Mr Moss, to lose the race through no fault of his own, but this is an argument which acts both ways, and one naturally is compelled to ask does this not also apply to Mr Bradley and Mr Prosser ? No steps of too severe a nature can be taken to put an end to foul-riding, and if instead of half-hearted measures the stewards had ruled both Canteen and Boseal out of the Cup race, as they should have done, they would have been applauded by every rightthinking sportsman in the colony.