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GEORGE PAUL Jnr

The death has occurred in Auckland of Mr George Paul, jun, who was for many years handicapper to the NZ Trotting Conference.

Mr Paul received his first handicapping appointment from the Auckland Trotting Club in 1926, and later he became handicapper to the Thames, Hawera, Taranaki, Wanganui and Hawkes Bay Trotting Clubs. Mr Paul established his reputation in the North Island to such an extent that, on the death of Mr H Brinkman, he was appointed handicapper to the NZ Metropolitan Trotting Club, and eventually made his headquarters in Christchurch.

Mr Paul's ability as a reader of a race, as we say in newspaper parlance, was extraordinarily sound. He was one of the keenest judges of trotting form ever identified with the sport, and had what is known as 'horsesense' in a highly developed degree.

Mr Paul was one of the first handicappers to depart from the strict time basis in the framing of his handicaps, and for this he came in for strong criticism when he put some of his revolutionary ideas into operation, but the results of his work soon began to confound his critics. One of Mr Paul's principal contentions was that it was illogical to penalise a horse registering 2.10 in a 2.20 class, say 10sec, when the fourth and fifth horses, which might have finished within a fraction of a second of the placed horses, could not be brought into line. Mr Paul was rapidly evolving a system of his own, completely divorced from the time factor, and the more lenient view he insisted upon taking of horses putting up fast times on perfect tracks had a big bearing upon the scheme limiting handicapper's penalties, which was passed by Conference in 1929.

Confusion set in, however, as a number of handicappers showed little desire to co-operate with the scheme. In 1933, Mr H F Nicoll, in his presidential address to the NZ Trotting Conference, stated:"...We have had considerable experience at this stage of the vagaries of handicappers; some do not appear able to grasp the essence of the regulations and others do not keep proper records. It will be noted in the order paper that it is proposed to bring in new rules giving your executive power to appoint one or more handicappers and assistants..." At that time there were no fewer than 11 trotting handicappers in the Dominion, and after the 1933 Conference these were reduced to three, Mr G Paul secured the principal appointment.

Mr Paul was a returned soldier from the Great War, and four of his brothers and a son were on active service in World War II.

Credit: NZ Trotting Calendar 5Sep45