BACKING UP LUCK 



troubles of pioneers and the difference between a good 

 season and a bad one. My chief reason for describing 

 all this is that by an extraordinary stroke of luck it 

 was on the journey from that place that I met a man 

 through whom things changed for the better in no time 

 — a proof that you never know your luck. On the coach 

 I ran across that good chap the late Mick Fennelly, 

 who was then trainer for the Hon. James White, for 

 a long time the most prominent Australian owner. 

 A long day in a coach with meals at roadside houses 

 threw me a great deal into the company of this burly 

 and delightful companion. Certain theories I had 

 about the two big handicaps due to be decided were 

 upset by Fennelly, who took a kindly interest in me, 

 and gave me two winners. If I had not left when I 

 did I should not have met him. I took three hundred 

 pounds to three pounds the double he gave me and was 

 paid. 



Ask Luigi at Romano's what luck means on occasions. 

 I remember going in there once instead of over to 

 Simpson's. I had determined not to have a bet, but 

 he mentioned something rather convincingly and I 

 telephoned a trifle. Up it rolled five minutes after 

 at six to one. I should not have got the tip else- 

 where, nor should I have had a bet. On the same day 

 a curious thing happened to Luigi. The S. P. men 

 he rang up wouldn't take fifty on a hot favourite 

 from him, so he turned round and had a pony on 

 an outsider, who popped up at a hundred to eight. 

 I have known many a man back the wrong number 

 in the pari-mutuel through insufficient knowledge of 

 a foreign language, and I have more than once taken 

 more tickets on a horse for a place than to win, through 

 absent-mindedness, and that horse has run second. 

 Mr George R. Sims has made a joke about my surname 



93 



