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IMPRESSIONS OF RACING IN INDIAI Englands crack rider Frank Woolton spent last winter in India riding In the service of a prominent turfman of that sunscorched land and on his return recently was naturally a muchinterviewed person in which saidAs line Sporting Life said As we say of a horse Wootton has furnirhcd and hned down since we last saw him and is Iow the acme of fitness In reply to a question put to him as to his weight he avers that he will be able to go to scale at 119 pounds within a month of the pr js ent date As I stand up with all my clothes on I lo not turn the beam at 120 pounds he added Ttis in itself will he good news for those owners who have retainers upon him for the season we arc about to embark upon always with the proviso cf strike permitting Next to his own Epsom stablt sheltering as it does one of the Derby favorites Wootton will ride for Mr Jack Joel In all he was not in the saddle more than ten weeks all told made up of six weeks at Calcutta three weeks at Bombay and ten days at Lucknow and during that period he identified himself with some seventeen winners in less than sixty mounts Ever a modest lad we failed to draw Frank as to any of his riding feats for he switched off from himself to Whalley who he stated did equally as well If not better than himself Saxby Templeman Jclllss and Bowley all rode with success but without my WoottonThe chances said Wootton The courses at the three meetings mentioned above take much after our Chester course in the opinion of Wootton They are oval in shape and not at all awkward to ride round Great care is be ¬ stowed on all the tracks in India nothing in the way of watering and rolling being spared and the best of galloping is thus obtained The class of ani ¬ mal running there though making no deep Im ¬ pression on Wootton nevertheless were good of their kind There may ha no great sprinters yet IIopp ner an own brother to Romney well managed to hold his own and captures plenty of races Chob ham once in a Newmarket stable not only won but has proved himself a very profitable investment to his owner Both ownerBoth these horses arc geldings which says Wootton strike me as the right kind of animals for India They are not so much affected by the heat and race far kinder than entire horses who quickly topThe get heavy of top The best horse and the most popular he threw a leg across during the ten weeks he was out there was Tangaroa which raced in England iu 1910 being a good third to Halcyon and Edward in the Greenwood Handicap at Kempton This horse the property of Mr Galstaun won five races out of the seven he started for carrying all sorts of weights In one of his two failures he was beaten by Victo to whom he conceded more than twentyeight pounds The latter was once the property of Mr Robson of Wantage WantageNot Not only was Tangaroa a nailing good horse but quite an idol with the natives who at Cal ¬ cutta lined the rails and cheered Wootton to the echo wheu going to the post Tangaroa returns to England shortly when Wootton is likely to renew acquaintance with him In his travels Wootton came across what he termed some very jolly fellows and struck up many friendships A charming native gentleman was a M Abdubrebman Bin Aziz Ebrahim of Chowpatty for whom he rode Grand Duke an Arab carrying and winning under record weight 14G pounds for a horse of that breeding By the way this gentle ¬ man has made Wootton a present of an Arab pony a gift that the Epsom horseman prizes as much as any of the large number of trophies that he has brought back with him In fact such a home ¬ coming was there on Sunday last that according to his father a pantechnicon van was required to land them all allPerhaps Perhaps the person that made the most lasting iwprcssiou upon Frank Wootton was Mr Dean of Lucknow who simultaneously holds the quadruple otliee of clerk of the course secretary clerk of the scales and starter for that meeting truly a most industrious man The standard of horsemanship is quite good in India In Woottons opinion colored jockeys are going out of fashion and such capable riders as Brown Fcrgusson and Evans the latter an English jockey that rode Mercutio in a lot of his races when that horse was a threeyearold arc doing well Colin Barrett now returned to England also had a very good season
