RIDERS AND THEIR CRITICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 952, 4 June 1908, Page 9

RIDERS AND THEIR CRITICS.

“Nothing succeeds like success,’’ and no one knows it better than the race-rider. Let him win, no matter under what circumstances, and he is mostly lauded to the skies, but if he happens to finish, say, second, after doing his mount full justice, and as likely as not he will be told that he “threw the race away.” This continual blaming of the second rider becomes monotonous at times, especially when it is plain to men of reasonable view that there is no reason for fault finding. As has been said before, it is a strange thing that the best riders are mostly on the lawn amongst the onlookers, while the race is being run. It is often amusing to hear people who have not the least knowledge of their subject condemning the performance of riders. Every man who goes to the races with but a theatrical knowledge of the game puts himself up as a critic in this connection, and the less he knows of the business the more anxious he seems to be heard. At a meeting recently one “authority” was heard bitterly complaining about the rider of the favourite “going to sleep,” as he put it, while a few yards further on another self-appointed critic was telling his friends how the race was lost through the rider “coming away too soon!” The truth of the matter was that this horseman nad left not the slightest room for fault finding in the handling of the mount, but he had the misfortune to find an opponent just a little too good for him at the finish. But, of course, “the average man in the crowd” can see no merit in anything short of actual success. It has to be freely admitted that the riders of the present day are not, taken all round, up to the standard of former years, but we cannot, all the same, agree that they are so often to blame as some of the critics would have us believe.—Melbourne I. and S. News.