The following are taken from a day’s selections—January 7, 1905—and show how the tips for hurdle-racing are even more unreliable than those for flat-racing:—
Gatwick Meeting (Six Races).
| London Star (Capt. Coe’s Specials) | 6 selections —all wrong. |
| Middleham Opinion (Mentor) | 3 selections (one “best thing”) —all wrong. |
| The Jockey | 5 selections (one “special”) —all wrong. |
| Racehorse (Admiral) | 1 selection (“one horse nap”) —wrong. |
| Early Bird’s Finals | 6 selections (one “good,” one “selected”) —all wrong. |
| Sun Dawn’s Finals | 6 selections (one “good”) —1 right (not the “good”). |
| Form’s Finals | 6 selections —2 right. |
| Presto’s Double | Double selection for two races —wrong. |
| Sunday Chronicl. (Galliard) | 4 selections —all wrong. |
| Sunrise’s Finals | 6 selections —all wrong. |
| Victor’s Finals | 6 selections (one “nap,” one “good”) —1 right (neither “nap” nor “good”). |
| Yorkshire Herald (Yorkshireman) | 6 selections (one “starred”) —all wrong. |
| Yorkshire Press (Ivanhoe) | 6 selections (one “special”) —2 right (not the “special”). |
| Result | { 6 right. |
| { 57 wrong. |
There are many examples of the inaccuracy of sporting tips in the evidence of the Select Committee on Betting. The best are given below:—
Rev. J. W. Horsley’s Evidence
(a) Manchester: out of 40 selected winners, not a single one was right.
(b) Seven sporting papers gave 79 horses: in 74 cases their predictions were wrong.
(c) Case of the Standard, which selected 179 horses for 148 races: 155 were wrong, and 24 right.