LIVERPOOL GRAND NATIONAL STEEPLECHASE COURSE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1213, 31 May 1895, Page 24

LIVERPOOL GRAND NATIONAL STEEPLECHASE COURSE.

The Special Commissioner of the London Sportsman writes : —ln the first place the going ia wonderfully sound, considering the rain we have had. It is really not holding at any point, and calculations based on any such fancy should be dismissed from the mind. Very few people ever take the trouble to understand what the Liverpool country really is like, and there are stories about heavy ploughed land through which horses with small feet cannot make way all of which are entirely baseless. If we believed what we read we should expect to find part, and a considerable part, of the course turned up with the ploughshare—a steam plough—to full agricultural depth, and that horses would sink well over their fetlock joints or even knee deep hi it. Now, this is by no means the case. The ground is little more than scratched, and you can walk over almost as firmly as you can on turf. Furthermore, there is only 170 yards of it, and there is surely nothing in that to prove very exhausting under any circumstances to the most incapable animal. On the contrary, it is just the little bit of ground like this that is invaluable for steadying horses and enabling jockeys to get them properly balanced for Sheir work.

Viewed from the stands the plough at Liverpool appears to be very extensive, for the reason that there is a lot of ploughed land on the inside of the track, and the eye does not distingush between this and the actual course itself. There is stubble for a few hundred yards before the plough, but this is pretty nearly as sound as the turf, and there is, in short, nothing whatever about the Liverpool going at any single point to pull horses to pieces, but there is just enough to prevent them getting out of hand and galloping over their fences without standing off and getting up properly from their hindquarters. You will generally meet people who scoff at the Liverpool fences now as if they were most-trifling obstacles, but these men have generally not seen them. They are, in fact, perfectly stiff and uncompromising still, and the old binders growing in their midst or behind them give the most substantial black-thorn strength to. them. Moreover, they are not sloped and cut away as are the more modern fences. They stand up, and horses know very well, as a rule, from the look of them that they cannot be chanced. At the. time of writing (this was a few days before, the decision of the big race) the rain has come on again, but it will not materially affect the course, which is well drained and sound throughout. Very different was it in the old Croydon days when the wet clay used to make some horses very nearly stick fast.