Epsom Races From Colonial Angle

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 60, 25 June 1948, Page 5

Epsom Races From Colonial Angle

“PRETTY GOOD AS A COUNTRY FAIR” (By Reece Smith, N,Z. Kemsley Empire Journalist) London, June 5, 1948. Wellington’s Trentham, as a racecourse, makes London’s Epsom look like something on the West Coast circuit. No offence to the West Coast, where the courses do not pretend to be great. Epsom does. This afternoon the King and Queen, Princess Elizabeth, the Duke of Edinburgh, myself and an estimated 750,000 others whose names I do. not know went to see the Derby. It would surprise me if that 750,000 estimate was not an exaggeration. It would astound me if more than 100,000 of them saw more than a few jockeys’ caps whizzing past above the heads of the crowd in front.

Any New Zealand racing club that did as little for the racegoer as is done at Epsom would soon have trouble distinguishing its tote turnover from its petty cash. Apart from mentioning that its up and down grades are more suited to a i Wellington milk horse than a thoroughbred, I look on the track itself as the affair of the horses and jockeys. • Not so the stands. The Epsom equivalent to the Trentham Members’ Stand is a tolerably noble piece of work. Grey toppers and fine frocks primp around before it in poses of great refinement, leaving ample space for the photographers to move among them. In Tattersall’s equivalent of the Trentham main stand, no grey toppers are required. A mere £4 admission entitles anyone to spend the meeting as if pushing his way towards the Athletic Park gates just after the final whistle of a big provincial game. There is no limit to the number they let in. There are no alternative stands. The stand probably holds a few more th&n the main stand at Trentham, but as it is catering for London, instead of Wellington and the Hutt Valley, this is not a great deal to beat the chest about. It gives nowhere to move about, little grass to walk on. Curiously enough, there are .some. English racegoers who have not got £4 to spend on the pleasure of being elbowed and trampled , round Tattersall’s stand. These odd fish feel they can do just as well for nothing anywhere around the course, on the inside of the track or the outside.

Right round the course, but specially at Tattenham corner and down the straight, today’s crowd crammed thousands thick. Certainly they did not have to pay for admission to the course, but no stands were provided for them, anyway. If they did not have the £4 for Tattersall’s they could work out their own salvation. Not that they missed as much - as they would have at Trentham. There were only six races, the first at 1.30. Except for the Derby’s £13,000 the stakes were about equal to those at Wellington.' • There was the advantage of being able to go shopping among the dozens of bookies to get as good a price as possible for one’s fancy. And there were merry-go-rounds, shooting galleries, whelk stalls and beer tents a-plenty. Epsom might be fair enough as a country fair, and pretty hot stuff as a mob scene, but by New Zealand standards it is a washout as a race meeting. You might dismiss all this as the sour sounds normally emitted by a battered punter. But when you don’t know a horse in the race, and a girl asks you to deal her in. on the bet, it would surely be discourteous to pass by My Love.