COUNTING CHICKENS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 816, 9 November 1929, Page 12

COUNTING CHICKENS

IF PHAR LAP HAD WON GOLD CUP OR TEA COSY? Displayed in th window of a fashionable jewellers’ of Melbourne, is the trophy for this year’s Melbourne Cup winner—a thing worth £2OO, insignificant enough compared with the great issues at stake on this. Australia’s greatest event, wrote a Melbourne critic of November 2. One wonders who will get this bauble. PI. R. Telford, ascetic vegetarian, who trains Par Lap, and probably would get as much pleasure out of looking upon a gold cup on a sideboard as he would from a teapot cosily covered with a knitted cover that has its utilitarian value? Or the owner. Mr. Davis, a richer individual who has leased the horse to Telford to race and train for two i years? What exactly will both get out of Phar Lap’s Melbourne Cup win, apart from that handsome trophy? Near £IO,OOO To the winner the share of the Melbourne Cup stands, roughly, near the £IO.OOO mark. Mr. Davis’s share, as owner, under the terms of the lease to Telford, is one-third. roughly £3,300, leaving Trainer Telford £6.600 for his share. News was given recently of sums laid off out of a certain Tasmanian £ 20,000 consideration to owners of other horses engaged in the Cup. But so far nothing has come out concerning any such grant to the Phar

Lap people. But being secretive | people, it doesn’t signify that there is no sum to nothing laid. The announcements made in Sydney that Phar Lap might not start have i no doubt inspired all those who share ; in any possible Tasmanian consideration rushing post haste to the telegraph office to register their concern | for this lessee and his Melbourne Cup chance. Since he has been in Melbourne, Telford has stoutly denied that he gave the newspaper representatives authority to publish what they did in Sydney prior to the A.J.C. meeting, to assert so definitely that he would not run for the Melbourne Cup. Whether that is right or not, it was probably good publicity from his point of view, and Telford and the books probably have to thank those afternoon journals. Much More Money It is possible that much more would have been laid against the High SycePhar Lap combination for the two Cups but for this, and. perhaps, some who had big sums at stake about Pliar 1 Lap’s Melborne Cup chance used persuasive powers to induce him to be a certain Melbourne Cub runner. The said iducements might aggregate anything up to £IO,OOO. So, apart from the £6,600 he will get out of Phar Lap’s win. trainerlessee Telford might get several thousands from the beneficiaries under the Tasmanian considerations, there being two £ 20,000 sums involved. And he might have been promised other shares in big coups at stake, amounting to £IO,OOO from persons who wanted to ensure Phar Lap’s running. The upshot might be a total of £20,000 awaiting him if Phar Lap can win Australia’s greatest stake. It might be more. Good luck to him. lie has struck gold unexpectedly, but not the miserly £2OO worth that will be in the Cup displayed in the jewellers’ window. No: it will be real gold that will set him up for life. And, if he is getting all the outside oddments mentioned in the above story, he is not making any more out of a good thing that has come into his hand, to wit, Phar Lap, than he is entitled to. A horse like Phar Lap only comes to one man in a million once in an aeon. And the one who doesn’t fully exploit such possibilities is left.