RACING IN JAPAN.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 978, 3 December 1908, Page 6

RACING IN JAPAN.

In a letter to Mr. T. Payten, with whom he was so long associated, the Syflnqv riHar TT . done fairly well since his arrival at Kobe (Japan), having won three of the seven races in which he had ridden up to the time of writing. He mentions the remuneration he received, and, considering the smallness of the prize-money for which the horses competed, was well satisfied with the liberality of his employers. He is the only foreign jockey riding.at Kobe, all the others being Japanese boys, who, in mile and a half races get their whips out immediately a start is effected, and are hard at their mounts from start to finish. Coffey states that the Japanese have a poor knowledge of training, and morning after morning a horse will be brought out and sent along at his top for a mile and a half or two miles. . Their ideas of feeding, too, are decidedly peculiar from an Australian standpoint. They mix up half a dozen eggs and a tin of condensed milk, with linseed, barley, crushed oats, and stalks of rice, the latter being cut up into chaff, and boil the whole lot for half an hour. A portion of this mixture and half a bucket of water three times a day is served out to each horse. Coffey, in addition to riding, has six horses in his charge, and when he treated them to dry feed his own stable boys were inclined to question his sanity. The race meetings are conducted in a lax fashion, and as there are no stewards the jockeys do pretty well as they please.

The horses are classified according to the races for which tiiey are eligible, and the age and sex of the horses, as well as the names of the owners, are given. Each horse has a number opposite its name in the list, and when working it has to carry a saddle cloth bearing a corresponding number, and, to make identification still easier for those who go touting the figures are in different colours, according to the classes. For instance, Japanese-bred horses will have blue numbers on the saddle cloth; Australian bred, red; and others black. The course is opened at 5.30 a.m., and is closed at 8 a.m., and as the official list shows there were no less than 215 horses in training, the racecourse must have been very lively for those two and a half hours. According to the Sydneyite, they do not bother about timing a horse more than a furlong, reckoning if it has to run eight it will average the same time for the lot. If this is so, the Jap, cute as he may be in other matters, has a lot to learn as regards horse racing. Each morning between two and three thousand people assemble to witness the training operations, but now that the totalisator is abolished the chances are that the interest taken will decrease.— “ Sydney Referee.”