MEMORY OF LOU DILLON WILL NEVER FADE

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6788, 20 February 1932, Page 13

MEMORY OF LOU DILLON WILL NEVER FADE

Wonder Mare Of 1903 Away back in 1903, the. five-year-old Lou Dillon trotted a mile in 1.084. inis record stood for many years. Writing of the American trotting queen, “Volunteer,” in the “American Horse Review,” has the following:— Should I he asked what one, of all the champions I have known, I would like best to he able to summon before me in the flesh, as in her days, of glory, there would be no hesitanee in niy reply. It would be, instantly, Lou Dillon.

Among my memories, there are none I love as I do those of this chestnut mare that flamed across the trotting skies like a meteor, in brilliance blinding as it was brief. There is no use trying to describe the indescribable, so why attempt to picture her in words? Each great horse is hound to have about him, or her, something sharplv individual that differentiates it from rill others. But Lou Djllon was different in not one but every way. She was a thing of wonder 111 a degree that no other champion has approached. Everything about her was amazing, exceptional, startling, unprecedented. During the time she focused the attention of the world she provided it with a succession of thrills that no ether harness horse has ever crowded into so brief a period. 11l a few weeks she litcrally came from nothing to the trotting "throne and had taken a record of two minutes —the first in history. Her achievement was intensified by tbe antagonism she aroused. Horsemen were either for or against her —there was no middle ground. Every performance she made, every fact and fiction about her, was attacked and defended. She moved always in “the fierce light that beats about a throne,” and when she disappeared from it,, she left behind her something like general bewilderment. Comparatively few persons who saw her had a clear idea of just what she was or had accomplished. And some of those who should have comprehended her best were prevented from doing so by ulterior motives.

I wa# fortunate in knowing both the supersensation, Lou Dillon, and the mare that she was when out of the spotlight with whom only a few became acquainted. Her fascination increased for me because the latter did not in any wav lessen the former. The old ” saying: “No . man is a hero to his valet,” is. a commonplace, but Lou . Dillon ,in “private life” was just as interesting and intriguing to me as when before the public. And when I said good-bye to her forever, as a matron of past 20, she was awaiting shipment to California where she was to be permanently pensioned, I could still see in her traces ot. the phenomenon of 16 years before. She was at Cnstleton and carrying her last foal. I knew I would never sec her again, and she was brought up at lii.v special request, for inspection. T wished to Idok long and long at her and fix still more firmly in my mind her personality, but being one of a party intent upon getting on their wav I was granted but a few moments. With a swelling heart I stroked "’her forehead while she stood quietly beside me,' Tears were coming.

unhidden to my eyes—when the horn of the motor honked impatiently, there were urgent calls, and I tore myself away and jumped into the car. We turned a bend in the driveway and looking back I saw through a blur a chestnut figure which in another instant disappeared from sight. It would have been difficult for me to have spoken then, had it been necessary. I realised that “Finis” had? just been written to the most enchanted chapter of my life with the trotters, and that there could never he another like it.

An exquisite photo of her head cameolike in its quality, hangs upon my bedroom wall, where the night-light strikes it. Her neck is slightly arched, her ears laid hack, ns was her habit often, her nostrils slightly expanded, her lips flecked with foam. The detail is beautiful —the texture of her coat, the veins standing out in high relief, the delicate modelling of her lovely head —all is there. I have a bit that she wore and a shoe. But it is uot tangible things that bespeak her. It is that transcendejit something, far beyond the concrete, and, in the last analysis, mysterious, that cannot he phrased in words but is emotional wholly, which to me sums up and in my memory perpetuates—Lou Dillon,'