ROMANCE OF RUBIO

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 64, 17 March 1933, Page 4

ROMANCE OF RUBIO

CAB HORSE'S NATIONAL

Now that the race for this year's Liverpool Grand National is. approaching, all the interesting stories of past winners are being revived. Of these none ■is more romantic than that of Rubio, who -scored in 190 S. . . . ' :■ -.••-• ■ ■■'

Kubio was one '.of forty-two horses brought to England as, yearlings by an American breeder, Mr. Haggin, says the London "Sporting Life." At public auction the forty-two lots realised an average of* 200gs apiece, but the weedy-looking Rubio was knocked down to a iNortharifci farmer for 15gs.. A year or-two later he was sold for 95gs to Major D.- P. Pennant, and, after working on the farm,.he was put into training, and' won a race at the Grafton Hunt Meeting in 1005. : Later on Rubio broke down badly, and his owner lent him to a sporting publican, a Mr. Browning, at Towcester. Mr.

Browning got him sound again by ; employing him-'ito draw the queer omnibus-cab which -plied- between Towcester station and the Pomfret Hotel, and in this lowly occupation he spent the,summer of 1907: On one bright afternoon during the sum!mer,_ Mr. Browning won a nice wager by driving Rubio thirty-five miles in the shafts of his trap! In the autumn of that year Major Pennant decided to put'the. horse in training with Costello, at Stockbridge. Six months later, starting at very long odds in a field of twenty-four, he carried off the most coveted steeplechase prize, in. the world, beating a better-fancied stable companion in Mattie McGrecor, owned by Major Pennant's nephew, Mr. W. Cooper.-