At the Trots

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 8

At the Trots

DDINGTON is known to trotting writers as Headquarters, and it was therefore fitting that a programme on trotting should. come from 3YA. There was no indication in the printed programme summary that "The First Day to the Great Day" was about trotting, and probably many people missed it, but having found it by chance and another, unlisted title, "Lightning in. Harness," I stayed to listen, It was a good programme. The horse in question, Blue Bonny, had her foibles, She was a shadow jumper, and it took a lot of patient work to teach her to stay. down at her gait, but on the Great Day of | her first race she rose to the oétcasion.

according to the Addington commentator, who must have felt odd reading a script for a change, and won nicely in 2.41 3-5 for the mile and a-quarter. The atmosphere seemed as genuine as it could be made within the limits of broadcasting, and it was interesting to note that the script-writer evidently

found smells important. How true this is. It is impossible to recall a trotting stable without smells. Horse sweat, ammonia, wet concrete, oiled leather, spirit soap, mixed with drifts of pungent, roll-your-own cigarette tobacco. It is a minor miracle to keep a smoke going while whistling through the teeth and scraping off a. wet horse with a bit of hoop iron, but although many noises were recorded for our benefit, that peculiar combination was not, nor was the crisp chat of the drivers as they hurtled, ear to ear, round the bends in the track. We couldn’t have everything, I suppose, and no doubt this omission saved a lot of valuable broadcasting gear from scorching.