OFFICIAL!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 270, 4 February 1928, Page 6

OFFICIAL!

DELAY ON RACE DAY A WEAK CASE management of race meetings on the splendid Trentham course leaves nothing to be desired in all but one respect, and this exception was 'responsible for some criticism from a Wellington turf critic. This was in connection with the delay in getting the races off, due to the keeping open of the totalisator to assist the tardy backer. In this week’.s “New Zealand Referee,’* there appears an apparently inspired reply to the attacks made on the system of altering the totalisator clock, but it is a weak case the defence has made out. Here it is: THE COMPLAINT “Some of the people who attended the Wellington races complained that the time at which the day’s programme was completed was far too late. The first race began at 12.30, and the last was timed to start at about 5.35. Trains landed people in Wellington from 6.30 onward, so the hour of return to the city does not seem as late as some suggest. From the club’s point of view it has been said that some of the delays were due to fractious horses hindering the dispatch of fields. An effort was made to pick up any such lost time, but when the public delayed in making their investments the club did not feel disposed to shut out revenue. The Wellington Racing Club is not one of the institutions which can live without a considerable income. It has spent many thousands in order to provide for the public facilities and comfort which are unsurpassed in New Zealand, and the public may be asked to bear with it a little if it manages its affairs in a manner which experience leads it to believe will best help it to pay for those facilities and comforts. Some of the club’s patrons have pointed out that in an eight-race programme 35 minutes could be saved by reducing by five minutes each the intervals between the races. To the layman a trial of this suggestion seems reasonable, but those expert in running race meetings doubt its practicability, unless the custom of sending the 1 horses straight from the birdcage to the post is adopted. It is very doubtful indeed if the Wellington racing public j —or any racing public in New Zealand —is prepared for such a change. It has become part of the better’s routine to study the horses in their preliminaries. and frequently the result of that study influences their wagering. And after all. with most of those who have given up a day to go racing, a little time more or less is neither here nor there.’’ Those people that got back to Wellington from the course at 6.30 p.m., must have missed the last race, and probably also the second to last. “Early Bird” left the course at 5.20 p.m., so as to catch the night Limited at Thorn - don at 7.15. He got on the very next train, which did not leave until about 5.50 p.m., and just as the train began to pull out the last, race was being run. Wellington was reached at 6.3 S p.m. The apologist makes no secret of the fact that the club encouraged the late investor by waiting for him. It is true that racegoers give up the day to racing, but it is too much to ask them to give up the night too.