HORSE RACING IN ENGLAND.

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 584, 16 March 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

HORSE RACING IN ENGLAND.

The information given in the Racing Calendar with regard to the number of horses which have run in this as compared with previous years, and of tha distances over which the races have been decided, is conclusive as to the fact that there is a steady decrease in the number of horses which are in training after their three-year-old caroor is over, and of racos decided over long coursos, the one following the other almost as a matter of certainty. It appears from tho Racing Calendar that 2057 horses of different ages ran in the season of 1877 : 805 two-year-olds, 604 three-year-olds, 318 four-year-olda, and 330 five-year-olds and upwards. In the second year of the present century, when only 536 horses ran, more than half of them (280) wera aged five years or more, 108 were fouryear- old», 117 three-year-olds, and only 31 two-year-olds; and as late as 1850 the two-year-olds, though their numbers had steadily been increasing, were still in a minority as comparod to tho oldor horses. But sinco then a groat impulse has been given to two-y#ar old racing ; and for the last 20 suasona they have been in a majority over horses of other ages. The decrcaso in tho number of longdistance racos his boon a simultaneous process, aud even within tho lust five years the races of over a mile and under two .have fallen from 323 to 220, those of two miles and under throe from 96 to 73, and thopo of and under from 20 to 15. The mwrjrnle of racing, which provides that a certain proportion of money shall be addnd at each meeting to races of not less than a mile, has been so far efficacious that prizes competed for over courses of from half-a-nulo to seven furlongs have fallen from 1053 in 1876 to 837 ; but, upon tho other linnd, races of half-a-mile and under aro more numerous now than they were in 1872, though tho total number of races was less by nearly a fifth than in that year, the precise figures being 1639 to 1923. Moreover, tho proportions in which the total of LI 94,652 given in added money at tho diiierout meetings of the season was divided show how urgent is the need for some reform in the distribution of the various race funds, for £101,929 went to handicaps, £'49,949 to two-year-old racos, an<l£lo,B2o to selling races, leaving only £31,948 for weight-for-age races. • Put in another form, this large auni of nearly £200,000 was allotted as follows : —£26,841 to halfmile races, £56,095 to races of five and six furlongß, £31,109 to races of from six furlongs to a mile, £39,387 to races of from a mile to a mile and a half, £24,304 to races of from a mile and a half to two miles, and £19,916 to races of two miles aud upwards.