CONTROL OF ENGLISH RACING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1553, 29 January 1920, Page 18

CONTROL OF ENGLISH RACING.

Many Australians still in this country, remnants of the A.1.F., are among my correspondents on the subject of English racing, and with hardly an exception they criticise its management and cost (says an English writer). Widespread interest, not unmixed with perturbation, must follow the news that the Jockey Club is shortly to review the whole question of its control over racecourse receipts. If the stewards are sincere

in bringing up this matter, and no reason whatever exists for supposing otherwise, then it should mean a considerable step in the direction of those after-the-war reforms which have been so much talked about. Powerful interests are involved, and any proposal drastically to reduce unrestricted profits would be sure of fierce opposition. But all rule, authority, and power must be with the Jockey Club, irrespective of private interests, subject, of course, to a due regard for right and justice. I find fault with the composition of the club, and have often lamented its inertia of supervision, but the principle of government is right. There must be no interference with the Jockey Club, except to energise it and bring it into line with the altered conditions of racing. However much we may deplore it, the fact confronts us that racing has become largely a business. Thank goodness, some of the old sporting spirit still remains, but it is up against strong elements of commercialism which, too, like the Gaiety giantess, grow and grow. There are rumblings of reform, and it is most devoutly to be hoped, that the Jockey Club have at last put hands to the plough in earnest. A supine policy has too long prevailed not only as regards supervision but also in the matter of methods. Great changes have come over racing in the last twenty years even, demanding in my humble opinion new methods. But with the exception of the starting gate, which we took in fear and trembling from Australia, little or nothing has been done to up-to-date the management of the turf, although by almost general consent it is now so much a business with the majority as to make the methods of other days look antiquated. Lord D’Abernon and Mr. Frank Curzon’s suggestions of reform to the Jockey Club’s committee of investigation are so much special pleading on behalf of centralised racing and the parimutuel. I look on this centralisation idea as a thoroughly bad one from every point of view. I venture to suggest that much more valuable information could be got from a man like Mr. Lionel Robinson, who has lived and raced both here and in Australia, and is in a position to supply comparisons from personal experience. South Africa and India might also be resorted to for likely hints.