HARD TRACKS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 255, 24 July 1936, Page 15

HARD TRACKS

Effect on Gallopers

All racegoers know that certain horses favour certain tracks, that some arc champions in heavy going while others are helpless, and that many also prefer really firm going. .The track most feared, however, as all trainers know, is the hard one, with plenty of "bone” in the ground, .lust why some horses are able to gallop freely on a hard track a’nd vice versa is dieciussed interestingly by England's leading authority on horseflesh, “Mankato,” of "Sporting Life,” who was prompted by a correspondent, who was of the opinion “that all hordes are equally liable to splints, and also wonders if the horn of the feet being white is the cause of inability to gallop on hard surfaces. Such has been his experience, he adds, with polo ponies in India, whereas he alleges lie never knew a pony with a good, solid black hoof to go lame.”

“Here, I presume (says “Mankato”), he means he never knew a pony with black hoofs to suffer from foot lameness. If such is the case, it would seem that his experience is limited. “In over half a century of veterinary practice I have seen, and treated, many hundreds of horses with fully pigmented hooves lame in the feet from various causes. As regards thoroughbreds, the inability to gallop freely on hard ground is not referable to a single cause.

“Many factors are involved. There are first predisposing causes in connection with conformation, such as the angle of the shoulder blade with the humerus, and the direction of these two bones; the conformation of the knees; the position and angle of the fetlock and pastern bones in relation to the metacarpals (canon bones); the shape of the feet, and the nature of the action. “Many horses who do not extend themselves freely on hard going suffer from no pathological disability, such as sore shins, splints, trouble in the sesamoids, bruised soles, corns, jarred shoulder muscles, tendons, and so forth. They simply shorten their action.

Sceptre Recalled.

“In other cases diagnosis reveals a particular cause. Horses with flat feet and low heels not infrequently are cripples when wearing narrow racing plates, but will move freely in exercise shoes furnished with cover. At times Sceptre had to be raced in her exercise shoes. “For the moot part the Son-iu-Law tribe go well on hard surfaces. They are light in their action, and are not over developed behind the saddle. Isonomy could move well on any sort of going, but his son, Isinglass, was far from at ease on hard bake. , .... “Jewitt had great difficulty in training him for the Two Thousand Guineas and Derby, for which the horse did almost all his work on the tan in that dry spell of 1593. Isinglass’s dislike to hard ground was inherited by his son, John o’ Gaunt, and has come down through Swynford to certain of the offspring of Sansovino. “My correspondent is not correct in his surmise that all thoroughbreds are equally liable to put out splints. There is considerable variation' in the texture of the canon boner* and the length and size of the small metacarpal, or splint bones, and these factors have a bearing on the incidence and position of splints. Nor must, it be assumed that a large proportion of horses who dislike hard going are affected with these bone deposits. Far from it. As “Mankato” points out that conformation has bearing on some horses inability to gallop on hard ground, it t« reasonable to suppose he could advance sound reasons why soft going should adversely affect others.