NEW ZEALAND RIDERS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 80, 1 October 1935, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND RIDERS

FAILURES IN AUSTRALIA

One of the best known and best liked of all New Zealand racing men who frequently visit Australia is J. -M. Cameron, says the Melbourne writer "Cardigan." He is here again with. Gold Trail and intends taking this mare to Melbourne.

Cameron asked me in Sydney the other day why so many New Zealand jockeys fail to do well in Australia, to which I replied rather off-handedly, "Because they cannot ride." "No," he said, "it's not that, but I have been puzzling my. brain to try to workout why really good horsemen at home come to Australia and ride like fifthrate apprentices."

He quoted a few examples and then went on to refer to the criticism that A. Tinker, the rider of Gay Blonde, received for his display on that mare in the Tramway Handicap at Randwick and on Silver Jubilee at Rosebery.

"Tinker," said Cameron, "is one of the best riders I have seen in the Dominion for years. He has brains and ability, and there are many people who have been going to races for years who declare that he is almost as good a rider as Hector Gray. Yet when he comes to Sydney he does not show his best form. He is criticised and probably the criticism makes him ride even worse the next time."

Considering the number of jockeys who visit Australia "from New Zealand with excellent home reputations, there are few who do well. Gray, of course, could ride well anywhere,- as on a horse he had a superiority complex. Voitre is much the same, being unaffected by place or conditions, and MeCarten is a similar case, although when he first came to Australia he did not show his best form and for some time was dubbed as "just a rider." But he had the courage And. ability to cast the complex from him, and nowadays there is no better-liked jockey riding than Maurice McCarten.

I can recall numerous other New Zealand riders who always shaped badly in Sydney and little better, in Melbourne. They not only failed to do anything right, but also appeared to have the unhappy knack of doing the wrong thing, which not only lost them many valuable races, but caused investors to declare that they would never again support a horse ridden by a New Zealand jockey.

It is to be hoped for the sake of Gay Blonde's admirers that Tinker recovers his best form before the Epsom. Riding in that sort of race counts a good deal, and more than one rich coup has been lost as the result of poor jockey ship.