THE SUWARROFF AND SUNDAY ‘HORSE MATCH.'

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1095, 24 February 1893, Page 26

THE SUWARROFF AND SUNDAY ‘HORSE MATCH.'

Viscount Knockroe’s c h Sunday, 9st 71b, Sir Sidney Carden's c h Suwarroff, lOst.

This was the match which was run off during the first Spring Meeting at Newmarket in 1824. It was ‘ set ’ the preceding autumn. His corpulent majesty ‘ George the Triumphant ’ then reigned with a sort of degrading splendour, and his example had, among other effects, the lowering of sport which Charles Greville deplored, and which later neither Lord George nor The Admiral could entirely cure. Sunday was a well-bred Irish horse, a bright chestnut, with a white blaze down his forehead, and a white stocking on his off foreleg. Whisker, the Derby winner in the Waterloo year, sired him—a sound, stout five-year-old, but almost untried except on the Curragh, where he had won a four-mile heat plate. Suwarroff, also a chestnut, was by Smolensko, from a Blucher mare, and bred &t Goodwood. He was seven years old, and had won over all distances. After the match was ‘ set,’ no large sums wera betted, though in November, 1823, some odds were laid on Suwarroff. Soon after Colonel Cutler, a man of shady repute, though about the Court, offered long odds against Lord Knockroe’s horse, but, as his lordship was in retirement at a 1 stuttering school,’ kept by a German doctor then in vogue, the suspicious opposition only came to his ears on New Year’s morning, when his private trainer (an Irishman named Kyran Pillion) called on him with startling news.

‘ Colonel Cutler was betting against Sunday as if he were a dead horse. . Yesterday glass-siftings had been found in the oat-bin. Last night an attempt to force the stall had been made; but to-day the horse was in London, and never better in his life, though Colonel Cutler’s man was in bed with a flattened nose and an arm as limp as a stocking till the doctor put it in splints. Sunday was a hard horse _ to train ’ (in those days a horse’s preparation was long and severe to meet the strain of heats and long courses), 1 but if Kyran could get him away from the cutlass crew Suwarroff would be nowhere in the match. In Ireland he would he safe, but the thieves o’ the world would never bet enough against him if he went there now. If his lordship would hear of a little plan and let Sunday go down to Avebury for a little time he might bet to the value of his last acre, for Sunday would win his race and his owner the price of a province.’ What further Pillion said will come out in the story. Enough here that it convinced and delighted his master, and that Sunday was on his way to Salisbury Plain before midday in charge of his trainer and trusty guard. Three weeks afterwards the touts of the period were bewildered by the reappearance on Newmarket Heath of Sunday to do very regular work under Pillion’s son Matthew. The horse however, seemed to do his sweats with less fire, and showed less of the turn of speed than before ‘ they had tried to get at him.’ Meantime, old Pillion had disappeared, and after an interval the opposition to Lord Knockroe’s horse revived and waxed strong, and every wager that was offered him was taken up sharply by his owner. Three weeks before the race (it was run early in April, 1824) the horse in young Pillion’s charge came out lame to his morning’s work, and went home to his box et cripple. That night .in St. James

street Lord Knockroe took from Colonel Cutlass a bet of 3000 to 500 guineas against his horse. He had hitherto refused to bet on the race with his friend, Suwarroff s owner. That day, too, ‘ Billy ’ Mothersall, a Yorkshireman who trained Sir Sidney Carden’s Irish horses at the Curragh, wrote to his employer; ‘ Crossing the. Great Heath at Maryborough this morning I saw Sunday doing a strong gallop. I find that old Kyran Pillion has had him in work about twelve weeks. The horse looks very fit and well —Pillion calls him 1 Biters Bit,’ but I am sure it is Sunday, and that it is Pillion who goes by the name of Johnstone, and is disguised in a coachman’s wire wig, pretending to be an officer’s servant.’ Three weeks later Sunday beat Suwarroff, and England saw tho last of Colonel Cutler. Lord Knockroe won a large sum over the race—probably £l2,ooo—but he raced no more, nor did Sir Sidney. Sunday was sold and went to the stud. His double, a halfbred half-brother from the same dam, recovered his lameness and went to Sir Sidney’s hack stable, a present from Lord Knockroe, ‘to testify publicly,’ as the donor said, 1 his undoubting belief in the entire integrity of his old friend, whose name should never be coupled with those of the scoundrels who had attempted a robbery at the expense of the good name of one gentleman and the pocket of another.’

Kyran Pillion survived by a few years his employer, Lord Knockroe, and his employer’s friend, Sir Sydney. Before he died, when nearly a hundred years old, he told the story of the race, and the robbery which was defeated by his skill in substituting (on the supposed training ground) a half-bred hackney for a great racehorse. Said the old man, * The white stocking and the white blaze on the hack’s face was painted daily with buttermilk and chalk by my son Matthew—God rest him! ay, indeed, painted fresh every morning from the day he left Avebury for Newmarket, and Sunday ami I left Avebury too, for Ireland, that the horse might be trained for his match against Suwarroff, I’m ould now, hut I upset the thief of a Colonel. I heard that the King never paid his stake, but I left Newmarket for ever when my lord the ould master sold out his racers.’ —Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette.