THE STARTER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 13 February 1913, Page 4

THE STARTER.

Who is the most important official on a I’acecourse? All do their share, but the one man whose good or bad work can make or mar the sport completely is the starter- Of what use is it for the owner to spend thousands upon his stable, or the handicapper to make the nicest adjustment of weights if the starter is incompetent? Very few of the followers of racing appreciate the work of the competent man. Often through no fault of the starter there is a bad dispatch- The public invariably remembers it against the official and gives him but little credit for a dozen good starts. Easy as the job may seem to the uninitiated, there are only a few really good starters. There must be first the natural aptitude and then the necessary experience under properly-controlled conditions before the perfect starter is evolved. No matter how competent the starter is he must be backed up by the officials and the bulk of owners and trainers —those with “influence” particularly —if he is to do his best. The natural qualifications for a startex- are just those which are necessary in other trying positions—nerve, coolness, firmness, tact, and the art of command without being tyrannical. And, of course, all these are useless without the strictest honesty. The starter must have no “friends.’’ Before the advent of the starting gate starting was a fearful thing, half an hour’s delay being not uncommon, and the tempers of horses, jockeys, trainers, and public were sorely tried, while it often reduced the contest to a pure gamble. Now a competent starter may do his work in just 60sec, and do it as near to perfection as possible. To give every horse an equal chance is, of course, not possible. But the unthinking or biased onlooker often blames the starter for what is the fault of th.?. horse, jockey, 01 size of the field or construction of the course. On this subject the “Saturday Re feree” (Sydney) has obtained the opinion of one of the best kn»wn of Australian starters- “I take no notice of the mob or what criticisms they indulge in,” he said, “I am content to be judged by those who know the game, and if I make a mistake do not complain of criticism. But a competent starter, backed up in the right quarters, and under fair com ditions, will make few mistakes. Sometimes what may appear a bad start is not so at all. The horses will get off together, but some quicker on their feet will dash for the front, and before they go many yards a portion of the field may be cut off, and get into bad positions. The starter cannot help that. “The great secret of good starting is that the starter, while being strict in every detail, must have the confidence of the boys. If he plays fast and loose with them he is done. Once let them see that he is fair, and will not take anyone at a disadvantage, and the rest is easy. They will obey him implicitly, knowing that he is going to do his best for them and the sport. In days gone by it was no uncommon thing for starters, some incompetent, others dishonest, to order a jockey back, and when his mount was turned the wrong way to dispatch the field, leaving him as much out of the race as if he had remained in the paddock. Starters have been credited, too, with having a set of certain jockeys- While that method obtained it was not surprising that jockeys were an unruly lot, doing their best to beat the starter, and that chaos reigned.” Unfortunately in some parts of the State things are still bad enough. “Then there are the trainers and their horses. It must be understood that the starter cannot get the horses away evenly if some of them are improperly tutored, or, in the bands of incompetent boys. And, of course, the early two-year-olds who have not had much experience, are at times troublesome. But. if the horses won’t go up to the barrier, what is.the use of condemning the starter for not making an even start? I remember a case in point. One day, in a field of about twenty youngsters one absolutely refused to go within yards of the post. I waited a reasonable time and then sent the others off without him. When I returned to the paddock the trainer accosted me and in an injured tone said ‘You left my

horse out of the race.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘(Do you think I was going to keep a big field of ‘green,’ but wellbehaved, horses waiting for a quarter of an hour for the sake of one with bad manners?’ I always make that a rule- I won’t penalise the good majority for the bad minority. “As for the boys, while I try to be just, I always like to give them the benefit of the doubt. If I am not sure that a jockey deliberately let his horse through the barrier, I put it down to the horse’s fault, but in every case of apparently deliberate rulebreaking by the jockey I inflict the prescribed penalty.” The moral of all this is that the perfect starter when secured, or the one nearly perfect should be highly prized and appreciated.