TYPES ON A RACECOURSE 



who seem to make a practice of it at all events might 

 have the good taste to leave their queries as late as 

 possible, so that they should not, in any case, forestall 

 the crowd who are chiefly interested. 



Many people I know who have been racing for some 

 years never have an idea of their own. They will 

 hang about different bookmakers who do a good 

 business and watch what is going on, and they will 

 frequently follow a " lead " blindly. Mind you, I 

 don't say that they occasionally do not score rather 

 heavily, but it seems impossible to me that a man can 

 go through a long experience of racecourses and not 

 be able to make his own deductions from form. 

 Naturally, when they do this there would be no further 

 use for the sporting prophet, but the total lack of 

 personal inspiration seems to suggest that these people 

 are gamblers only as opposed to judges of what a horse 

 can do. If they do not learn in a year or two they 

 will never learn, although at the same time there is 

 always something new to acquire in the way of racing 

 instruction. 



Of quite a different type is Mr Charles Hannam, 

 who relies on his own judgment more than following 

 the trend of what others are doing. In fact he gives 

 the lead. He will come to the conclusion that a certain 

 horse can win, and back his opinions much as Mr Charles 

 Hibbert will lay against — in fact pepper — a horse he 

 doesn't think has a chanoe, in this respect going away 

 from figures altogether. To those who go racing re- 

 gularly, and see Charles Hannam with a card and pencil 

 in his hand, it is known that, however sociable he may 

 be off a racecourse, it is business only when in the 

 ring or the club enclosures of which he is a member. 

 He has an extraordinary aptitude for figures, and can 

 tell in no time, from the odds offered, whether it is 



286 



