JOHN CORLETT AND THE BOOKIE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1245, 26 February 1914, Page 12

JOHN CORLETT AND THE BOOKIE.

In a recent issue of the “Sporting Times” Mr. John Corlett tells how he bested Mr. Middleton, a leading bookmaker and one of the smartest men in the English ring. Mr. Middleton wrote a charming book, and in referring to a book promised for the new year from the famous English trainer Sam Darling Mr. Corlett recalls Mr. Middleton’s work. When he attacked a horse in the betting that horse never recovered, and he was seldom wrong when he backed one. In his Middleton story Mr. Corlett introduces that really great racehorse Minting, owned by Mr. R. C. Vyner. “He (Mr. Middleton) was considered the best and keenest judge of the market in the ring, and for that reason we felt proud of once getting the better of him, and all the more so inasmuch as we have usually been regarded as a ‘mug’ in our betting. One of the greatest handicap victories we ever witnessed- -and perhaps the greatest—was when Minting with lOst. on his back, and the bottom-weight with sst. 71b., won the

Great Jubilee Handicap at Kempton in a canter by three lengths. In the following Cambridgeshire, though heavily weighted, he was well in, for the simple reason that on the handicap scale he could not very well be put out of it, and he became a phenomenally hot favourite. In the second October week we were dining with the late Mr. Edmund Tattersall at the Rutland Arms, Newmarket, and mentioned that a good judge had told us that from what he had seen that morning he was certain that there was a screw loose with Minting. Mr. Portman regarded this as a sort of cock pheasant that ought to be promptly brought down, and from the dinner table we sent a message to the late Mr. John Wingrove Smith to lay £lOOO against Minting, and in this, we believe, Mr. Portman stood in. In a short time we received an answer, ‘I have laid for you. 1000 to 300 Minting, and I may tell you the taker was Mr. Middleton, who does not usually back dead meat.’ Minting did not run, for all that, and for once in a way we were the ‘dead meat merchant.’ Minting was, in the meantime, pulled out for the Champion Stakes, for which long odds were laid on him, and he was beaten by Friar’s Balsam, finishing second. His leg probably gave way, as he never ran again.”