RACING INQUIRIES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1409, 9 April 1912, Page 6

RACING INQUIRIES.

Sir,—Surely you must be wrongly informed when you state in your sporting notes of the 25th "that tho Hawke's Bay Metropolitan Committee had refused to allow H. Gray to be represented by counsel when his case comes before that'body." Should you be correctly informed, it is timo such a disgraceful travesty of justice was put a stop to. J,ct us look at tho composition of most racing committees, and we will find one or more trained lawyers amongst them, who take the position of prosecutor, whenever a delinquent is hailed before the stewards or committees, and conduct the brow-bsat-ing of the unfortunate in an exaggerated form of that adopted by a policeman to a desperate criminal. .Mark you, all this with closed doors! Yon are excluded from all inquiries connected with racing. If Hie press were admitted to all racing inquiries, as they will require to be before we get any further forward with tho improvement of t.he turf, at anyvate, the public havo a right to the fullest information, and that is not supplied by the biased, garbled reports we get at present. What about our much-hackneyed lerm "British faii-play"? Surely it should extend to courts composed of sportsmen, unless the name is a misnomer. 1 have no brief for Gray, nor do 1 care whether lie is guilty or innocent, but ho is entitled to a fair trial, and it is a deplorable fact that such is hardly attainable in our racing courts as at present constituted, with tlie tedious procedure and (he spurious appeal court.—l am. etc.. INTERESTED.

March 27.