WAIRARAPA RACING CLUB.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIX, Issue 1093, 23 March 1911, Page 9

WAIRARAPA RACING CLUB.

A meeting of the stewards of the Wairarapa Racing Club was held last week at the Racecourse, Mr. W. E. Bidwill presiding. The financial statement showed that the overdraft on current account was £769 9s sd, and accounts to the amount of £133 7s 7d were passed for payment. It was decided that the ten shilling totalisator be not used at the coming meeting, the opinion being expressed that there should be a separate building for it, apart from the £1 machine. The secretary was instructed to see that the staff on the totalisator was increased.

Messrs. W. E. Bidwill and O. C. Cooper were nominated as delegates to the Racing Conference, and to the Metropolitan Committee. The chairman was authorised to affix the club’s seal to the regulations which had been drawn up in reference to the control of admission to the racecourse, and these will be sent to the Minister for Internal Affairs for his approval. The conditions of light-weight riding in England are altogether different to what they were when boys of from 4st to sst distinguished themselves (says the “Sporting Times”). They are differently schooled now to what they were then. The earlier a boy is put on a horse the better the horseman he becomes; but nowadays there is the School Board to consider. There is another thing to consider in teaching light-weights. They cannot get the practice they formerly did. Small boys were sent to the post in race after race on non-triers. They gained experience at the expense of morality. It did not matter whether they got off or not, but all the while the jockey was gaining confidence and experience, and was “all there” when at length he had to go for the money. Non-triers are no longer recognised, or, if they are, woe to all concerned. “I hear,” said old Admiral Rous to us on one occasion in his sanctum in Berkeley Square, “that things have come to such a pass at many of the suburban meetings that false starts are got up so as to give time for a messenger to come from the grandstand with instructions as to which horse was to win.” We dare say it was so. We once saw a race for which the four starters belonged to Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Smith. The lot belonged to Brown.

Kohinoor, a cast-off of Mr T. H. Lowry’s stable, won a double at the Waimate meeting last week. As a two-year-old Kohinoor showed that he had heaps of pace by winning the Electric Plate at Riccarton.