HECTOR GRAY’S POSITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1155, 30 May 1912, Page 7

HECTOR GRAY’S POSITION.

Very little sympathy will be wasted on Hector Gray for the extended disqualification he has received from the Taranaki Metropolitan Racing Committee, for doing riding work for a New Plymouth trainer.. This is the second time since Gray suffered his twelve months’ disqualification for “crooked”; riding at Dannevirke, that he has deliberately defied the Rules

of Racing. At Feilding he earned an additional four months’ disqualification up to twenty months. Had Gra.y been ignorant of the fact that he was committing breaches of the rules there may have been a reasonable prospect of the New Zealand Racing Conference taking a lenient view of his offences, and a portion of the additional penalties may have been remitted. But in Gray’s case no such suggestion of ignorance could be pleaded, as his previous disqualifications were sufficient to ensure him being thoroughly conversant with the pains and penalties his actions would bring dowja on him. THE FUTURE HOPELESS. Gray is a capable horseman, but his career as a jockey has been far from exemplary, and it is hardly likely now that when his full term of disqualification has run out,but that he will find considerable difficulty in again inducing any metropolitan body in the Dominion to issue another license to him to ride on any registered race meeting. In the circumstances, it is hardly likely that Hector Gray will ever again don a racing livery in. New Zealand. There will no doubt be some who will declare that the added terms of disqualification entered against Gray savour somewhat of “hitting a man when he’s down,” but this can never be contended with any show of reason for the acts that earned the extra punishment were flagrant breaches of the Rules of Racing, and were practically acts of defiance on the part of a wrongdoer.