GALLOPING GLOAMING

NZ Truth, Issue 878, 23 September 1922, Page 5

GALLOPING GLOAMING

r-~- , An Historic Event Interesting Interview With Trainer Mason. (From "Truth's" Sydney Rep.) A man who knows Dick Mason, trainer of Gloaming, very well approached the veteran New Zealand trainer at Randwick just before the historic race for the Chelmsford Stakes. "Well, Mr. Mason," he said, "how is the old horse?" Mason cast a look at the track, Avhere the hurdlers had just finished ploughing up the soft soil with their hoofs. Then he dug his heel into the sodden turf. ■ "This rain is bad luck," he said. "Gloaming AA'as never any good m heaA r y going." "No good m heavy going? Why, he's a very solid built horse, with any amount of strength. He ought to be just the very horse to plough through anything." "Well, he isn't," said Mason. <! He cuts deeper into soft going than any horse I eA'er saw. I'd make you a bet (Mason doesn't bet, but that is the way he put it) that if you started a dozen horses OA^er a heaA'y track and Gloaming was among them, I could pick out his tracks for you afterwards. The length of his stride and the way he pulls the ground out with his front feet will tell me." "But why should he?" persisted the questioner. "Why should he shift more soil than the others?" Then Mason explained the inner mysteries of action iii mud. "It's his style of galloping," he said, "He has no upward action with his knees at all. He gets his front feet out a long way m front of him— he takes a tremendous stride— and then he brings his front feet back without any lift of the knees at all. If he gets hold of a hoof-full of mud he brings it back with him, and a horse can't keep on lifting mud out of the ground -when he is up against such as Beauford." "How will the mud suit Beauford'" "That I can't say," said Mason. "I haven't studied, his style of going but I think he lifts his feet' a bit higher than my horse. Very few horses go as close to the ground as Gloaming does. To win a race m mud you want a horse with a bit of upAvard knee action and Gloaming hasn't got any." c So there one has the solution of the problem why some horses gallop so much better m mud than others. AFTER .THE RACE. "Well, Mr, Mason, do you reckon the going lost Gloaming the race?" "No, I Avon't say that at all. I told you . the soft going was against my horse, and. I say so still. But after Avhat Beauford did, drawing an outside marble ahd having to come through the field, I have no excuse to make at all. Beauford beat him beyond any question, and the going raav not have been any more to Beauford's liking than to Gloaming^. But this I will say for my old horse. I reckon he ran a wonderful good game race. He's a year older than Beauford, and when a horse conies to over six years old it's like the difference between a man of thirty-five and a man of forty-flA'e. One is as good as ever he Avas, but the other is a bit past his best. Gloaming has raced twice as much as Beauford'