TURF FRAUDS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 128, 15 October 1875, Page 8

TURF FRAUDS.

An English review publishes an article on " The Turf : Its Frauds and Chicaneries," the object of which is to show that the immorality of the turf is daily telling its own tale. "The history of the turf/ it closes by saying, •' is daily being written in letters of blood in the annals of the nineteenth century." These views are supported by an. elaborate examination of turf practices, of which the following are illustrations amongst others : — " It is known that a horse entered for both the Two Thousand and Derby has been 'pulled/ or not allowed to win the first race, in order, not to have a better chance of winning the latter, but, being a favorite for loth races, that he might by losing the first race figure at longer odds in the betting for the second one, and therefore mate it enormously profitable to run him for the Derby. A horse that wins the Two Thousand is certain to be quoted immediately thereafter at 2 or 3 to 1 for the greater event, assuming that he has been entered for both races, which docs not always happen ; but, m the case of a horse that runs for the Two Thousand Guineas and appears quite incapable of winning that race, it is assumed that he can. have no chance of carrying off the blue riband of the turf, and so he recedes at once to a long price in the betting —perhaps to the outside odds of 1,000 to 15 ; and at that fVure such, an amount of money may be invested as makes it worth" the while to all concerned to strain every nerve to render the Derby a certainty for him. Here is an illustration of an opposite mode. Of late years horses have been known to run for, and win the Two Thousand Guineas, which, although entered for the Derby, had not a chance of winning that race, but the general public, bein<* in ignorance of the fact, kept backing the horse as if the race were an absolute certainty for that one animal : the amount of money expanded being almost fabulous. As a matter of course, the whole procedure was pre-arranged, the owner having an interest in the money that was obtained— or, to put the thing more plainly he Bhared in the robbery of which the unfortunate votaries of the turf were made the victims. It is a turf maxim that no man can make a certainty of his horse winning a race, but he can make a certainty that it shall lose one. On this immoral aphorism a great deal of the chicanery of the modern turf has been founded There are many ways of ensuring that a horse shall lose a race. The owner may instruct his jockey to pull him, to appear to make a oreat effort to wm, but to make certain of losing ; or, to make assurance doubly sure in case the animal should overpower its rider and win •fiV o^ ™ nte , d 1° d ? s .°> the 'rainer of it may let him have a pailful of water before being saddled, or, it may be two pailsful— 'one, as a trainer once told us, < won't sometimes do the trick ' That kind of turf swindle is oftentimes an enormous success, many thousand pounds being frequently netted by the men who are in the < swim, as it is called. One case that we know of enabled a confederacy of turf swindlers (we cannot call them anything else) to net a sum of over a hundr«d thousand pounds." ° Taking the handicaps, the writer names one the Charing-cross Handicap, and depicts the swindling practised as follows — • " The theory of a handicap is, that all the horses are so evenly •weighted as to place them on a thorough equality throughout the race and that if they were all to start in a line, noso to nose, so would they end at. the winning post. Of course, iv practice no such result ever takes placo ; the handicapper having been deceived by the running of horses which have been singled out by one or two astute men, and expressly kept for the Charing cross. Th.se horses have been ridden falsely at all sorts of meetings till they are at last apportioned a weight which, as those in the secret say, makes the race a moral for them ; it is imagined, in short, that the horse which will be selected to fight the battle cannot lose. The animal to be chosen on the day has gained such a bad reputation in the meantime by his repeated failures that he does not become prominent in tha boltin^ and he is in consequence not fancied by the public. Moreover by waj of throwing dust in the ejes of the betting men, the owner or commissioner of the stable has entered three or four animals to con test the same prize, so that it is very difficult fop outsiders to «ay which one of the lot will prove the Simon Pure on the day and con sequently the winner (that is, th« winner if all goes well' with the selected horse) is at a long price in the various betting lists and in the open turf market as well. Many devices are resorted to in order to get the money • on ' quietly ; rumours are circulated that tbe horse has broken down in training, that there is a better animal in the stable, that he has not yet been tried, that he ran badly at such and such a meeting, that he will be scratched before the day of the race, and many similar canards. The consequence is, that the odd s against the animal's chance of winning gradually increase till they reach forty or fifty to one, or perhaps sixty-six to one as the case may be. Through a confederacy, all operating together the horse is quietly backed to win a sum of, let us say, fifty thousand pounds, which, should the horse win, will bo divided among the three or four persons who are interested in the animal. But besides the gains which are pocketed through the instrumentality of the winninohorse, a large sum is also netted by means of commissions which have been issued to 'lay' the odds against the other horses which have been entered m the same interest, but which are not to be allowed to win the handicap, although they have been carefully puffed into notice till they came to be favourites and figure at' a very shore price. J "If all goes well, and no mistake has been made in estimating the chances of the horse, he wins the race easily, having been let into the handicap at a ridiculously light weight. But such a grand coup is often frustrated because of there being another Richmond in the field. It not (infrequently happens that there are two or three distinct parties who each fancy they can win the Charing Cross Cup llus idea soon gets wind among the initiated, and then the genii who manage such matters go to work so as to plan a still bigger ' robborv ' than is implied when only one party of professionals is interested. Only one horse can win a race, and therefore if each of the three

divisions fancy that they have a competent animal, it stands to reason that when the day of reckoning arrives two of the parties will have to put up with a severe disappointment. By a little finessing tho*e interested are brought together, when, after comparing notes, it is arranged that they shall all go for the best horse of the lot, and with a view to find out which is the best one a trial takes place. We will assume that each of the interested stables has four horses entered for the cup, and that by means of a home trial the best of each four has been found out. That is an easy matter accomplished, as each set of four horses is made to run a race, carrying the exact weight at which they have been handicapped in the cup. The next test is to put those winners together in order to find out which can conquer the others. The railways afford plenty of facilities for such trials, and, as privately as possible, the horses are sent to an appointed place, when a trial is entered upon about which there can be no mistake. One of the three horses wins ' in a walk,' as the saying is, and the knowledge thus obtained enablos the confederacy to devise such a plan of action as will ensuie them a very large haul of cash if their horse wins the race, and a suji scarcely less from the ' milking ' of the other two. The clever persons who manage these things like to have more than one string to their b^w, and when so many are entitled to share in tl??^ ' good things/ it is necessary that the gross amount of money out of which the credulous public are to be swindled should be of corresponding magnitude. The different transactions connected with the management of such a coup as we have indicated are arranged with a tact and ability worthy of a better cause. The utmost secrecy is observed in all that is done, so that the public may be induced to back other horses ; a countless mimber of lies have to be disseminated over the length and breadth of the land ; and a faJse idea of the trial will be circulated by means of unscrupulous writers who can obtain access to the sporting papers. The Spider, who was thoroughly beaten in the trial, will be lauded to the skies, and pronounced certain to be in the first three at the finish of the race. Cuttlefish, second in the trial by means of machinery well known to the initiated, is installed in the betting arena as first favorite, and ultimately very short odds and large sums of money are laid against him. The same turf writers who so assiduously help to create a spurious favorite, write with a remorseless pen against the horse which is in reality the best of the lot— the one onwhich the hopes of the confederacy are indeed high. The merits of Porcupine are systematically decried, and so the ball goes rolling till the race is run and the money bagged. It has more than once happened, however, that all the elaborate and well devised plans of the most astute turf swindlers have been frustrated by the good runnino- of some horse not hitherto thought capable of winning a handicap. So many can play at the same game. The owner of the winner being what, in turf parlance, is called " a small man," was not thought worth the trouble of conciliating, and so he takes revenge by winning the cup. What is perhaps still worse for the swindlers, the trophy may be carried off by some gentleman who, even in. the present days of turf corruption, runs his horse fair and square, and would spurn to enter into betting relations with the Billy Button bookmakers of the period. In these swindles it is the public who are robbed, and as the public will bet, and from being so cleverly hoodwinked have an nnhappy knack of backing the wrong Horse, the public are rightly served when they lose their money. What possible chance can tbe piiblic have in the face of the arrangements we have detailed ? Our only regret is, that as one army of backers of horses retires disgusted after their battle with the bookmaker, another host quietly falls into their place, and the bookmaker, jocund and smiling, is as ready to vanquish the new battalions as he was to fight those which preceded them. Let lose their money who may, the bookmakers gain to a certainty.