THE CLUBMAN

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1296, 25 February 1915, Page 6

THE CLUBMAN

Even those who have been long accustomed to attend race meetings have been much out in their estimates of attendances. The secretaries of racing clubs should be in the best position to gauge the crowds, and after gate and railway returns are made up most of them can give a very good idea of the number of people that have attended. Estimating from appearances is another matter, and some people make but a very hazy forecast. There is a tendency to overstate numbers and boom meetings. Local prejudice causes some people to exaggerate attendances at ihe expense of other meetings, and the estimates sometimes given can be very heavily discounted at times. There are only a few clubs in the Dominion that can keep an effective check, however. The Auckland Racing Club is now one of the ijunbcr, and probably, like the Australian Jockey Club and the Victorian Racing Club, this club, which at its summer meeting musters the largest crowds seen on any racecourse in the Dominion, will come forward with figures to show to what actual dimensions a Northern race crowd can reach. Many were of opinion that there was never such a big assemblage as on the occasion of the last summer meeting, and they were curious to know how many people were present. The receipts of the Auckland Racing Club, it is an open secret, were never so large in gate money. The number of complimentary and members’ tickets, it has been stated, were quite as large as usual, yet the results showed that the attendances had fallen much below some previous estimates formed without data and from mere observation.

The Auckland Racing Club, the Canterbury Jockey Club, and the New Zealand Metropolitan Trotting Club draw the largest crowds to their leading meetings. Of this there is no question, and the larger the crowds the less money in proportion to the number that attend is handled at the totalisators, which goes to establish the popularity of racing as a sport more than anything else. At one time it seemed a fail' estimate to compute the amount invested on the totalisator during an afternoon at £1 per head of an assemblage, but as people became educated to speculate, and better able to afford to do so, the proportion worked out at more, and now from £2 at the biggest meetings to £3 and £4 per head at some of the medium and minor ones is a frequent experience. The investments vary according to localities and the wealth or otherwise of the districts in which the meetings are held. The weather is an important factor to consider, and this year clubs have been particularly fortunate in getting large attendances and increased totalisator returns, but there has been a noticeable reduction this year in the size of the fields on a majority of the courses, and this without any increase in the number of race meetings. The reason for this is surely worth considering. A few clubs have never had better numerical results —but only a few. It seems somewhat strange that while the prize money is getting better there is a disinclination of so many who can afford to race to enter or continue in the ranks of owners. If the ownership of racehorses will pay, there never was a time like the present to race for good stakes. Those who race for the sport and love to see their colours unfurled have always a chance with good and even moderate horses well placed, of gettingsomething like a fair return for their outlay. Horses can be purchased or leased reasonably enough, but many of the best-known backers of horses won’t take on the cost of keeping them. They get the best of information without cost and speculate to their heart’s content.

Betting per medium of the totalisator may not appeal to some people as a money-making proposition, but there are, nevertheless, a lot of followers of meetings who can be put down as experts, not to call them professional punters, who, if there is

anything to be got out of the game, are likely to get a better share than the ordinary and occasional bettors, who do not have the same chance of following form and attending the meetings. The idea of keeping horses themselves for other people to have the same chance of betting on does not appeal te them. They prefer that other people should do the footing of the bills while they get all the available information about the horses as though they were their own. There are backers who get more or less valuable information from well-in-formed sources, and of course their money, which reaches the totalisator, helps the clubs along. Tn some quarters it is believed that the rules of racing which were introduced to prohibit owners, trainers and jockeys from betting per medium of bookmakers have had the desired effect, and it is to this that the increase of business per the totalisators is being put down. There may be somethingin the contention, but we incline rather to the opinion that the high price of beef and mutton, butter and wool and farm and station products for export and money for surplus horses for war requirements have all had something to do with the increase of business experienced by the racing clubs of the Dominion.

The increase in the attendances oh almost every racecourse is due partly to export receipts and the special facilities that have been given to the people to travel within the Dominion at a reasonable cost, in the very excellent weather which has existed throughout the past seven months. With less favourable meteorological conditions, and the prices for the products of the country lower, there might have been a different tale to tell. There may come a change, but it would seem that we have not yer reached the high water mark. There would need to be a very big slump in the racing business of the next five months to prevent the realisation of another record year. Certainly the racegoers of the Dominion have not allowed themselves to become depressed over the war. Deplorable as many of the incidents and happenings in connection with the war have been since the outbreak, and great the sacrifices of life, racing has been carried on as the big business it has become without let or hindrance in the colonies and largely in England, and it was only last week that we were advised by cable from France, the seat of war, that racing there is to be discontinued until the finish of hostilities. When the war commenced news was received that four hundred English stable hands and all the thoroughbreds in training had been

sent from Chantilly, in France, to a safer locality, and some of the horses of the French racing men and Belgians were afterwards shipped over to England, where some have raced, and with success. Even in Egypt the colonials are now talking racing, and some of the better bred of their remounts, and a few of the thoroughbreds that had had experience of racing before they were made troop horses of, will no doubt be heard of at military race meeting ere very long, for amongst our officers and soldiers are good sportsmen and good horsemen, who are not likely to relinquish the national pastime if there is half a chance to pursue it. In France and in Belgium the position in racing matters is all awry, and there is no time or inclination for its continuance if it were practicable.

There have been many good mares in New Zealand, and some of them no doubt better than Warstep. If they had had the same chances —that is to say, had they raced under the same conditions —they could no doubt have done all that she has done, but few would have such good performances to point to at the same age as the daughter of Martian and Stepdancer, who is a full-sister to Menschikoff, who was by Stepniak

from Pibroch, by Lochiel from Fallacy, by Stedmere from Deception, all well-known producers of classy racing stock. Warstep’s achievements are those of a really good four-year-old of her sex, and having carried the substantia! impost of 9.13 to victory in the Dunedin Cup she registered a weight-carrying performance that has rarely been equalled in the colonies in recent years by mares of any age. The value of the performance can be estimated by judging what she beat, and what others have accomplished on the same and other courses. It is very probable that Ogier was just a bit better when he ran Warstep to a head than when he raced against Pavlova and Indigo in the Wellington Cup, but he carried a more substantial weight. When the famous Traducer mare Lurline won the same race in 1874 she was the same age, but the distance extended to two miles and a distance, and she carried 9.9, and then the winimum in handicap races was a stone less and courses were not so good. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the class of horses was not so good, as Trade cer was a great sire of racehorses and Lurline’s dam, Mermaid, was an imported daughter of King Tom and Waterwitch, by the Flying Dutchman, and made herself famous by producing a long string of sons and daughters, some of which raced with dis-

tinction or became great producers in turn. It is impossible to institute comparisons under the circumstances. All we can say with certainly is that Warstep is a filly or young mare of distinction with further possibilities. In the same light we regard Pavlova, who won the Wellington Cup and the other two chief handicaps over middle distances at the same meeting, and it may be mentioned that Pavlova is a daughter of Charlemagne 11., who some people had got it into their heads would not beget stayers, until Carlita, a three-year-old, last spring displayed evidence of being something more than a sprinter when she won the V.R.C. Derby. Pavlova’s dam is from Stepka, a daughter of St. Leger and Stepfeldt, full-sister to Stepn ak, and thus we have further evidence of the value of the Nordenfeldt — Steppe strains. What Pavlova could have done had she been asked to meet Warstep at the Dunedin meeting we cannot know, but there was every bit as much merit in what she did at Wellington as what Mr. Dalgety’s mare of the same age did at Dunedin, and had she been asked to change places with Warstep those who saw her beat Ogier and others at Wellington would no doubt have given her a good chance of succeeding. Warstep’s retention of form is

remarkable, but Pavlova has raced all the season, though not in long races. Another little mare that is just now very much in the limelight

is the happily named Stepniak mare Tinopai, who has won her races and run this season like a stayer, and is certainly very useful for her inches, and strange to say she did not race at two and three years old like one that would come to stay so well. Now she finishes well, and will get further than a mile and a quarter, and Mr. Hannon might just as easily have won a goo dstake or two with her as so many minor cup and other events. Racing, and judicious racing, has fitted her, however, to accomplish good feats and she is just now right up to concert pitch. She may be a remove or two below Warstep and Pavlova, but she has some of the same good blood in her ve ns, and, indeed, has a good pedigree being from the Soult mare Mignon, who was from Lady Emmeline, by Somnus, one of the finest of Traducer’s sons, from Fanny Fisher, ancestress of many good ones by Fisherman, winner of sixty-nine races in England, and a sire whose blood has come out in many of the cracks of the colonial turf. Warstep and Pavlova are each members of the No. 5 family. The Waikato mare is of the No. 12 line, and all three are of the same age.