REVERSAL OF FORM.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume X, Issue 476, 7 September 1899, Page 17

REVERSAL OF FORM.

Ever and anon during the season (says the Chicago Horseman'} we hear this or that driver or owner charged with fraud in pulling this or that horse at some meeting or other, the particulars often being hazily fixed - in the speaker’s mind, if one may judge by the indefiniteness of his utterances. The public has always been prone to censoriousness, and if there is a chance in a hundred to show up the seamy side, up it comes in all its ugliness. The propensity seems to be rather stronger on the turf than in most other lines, and the reason for this probably is that most money changes hands sure rapidly in racing than in most other businesses. If a man loses a dollar or two he has risked on his own judgment, it is very seldom that he will not try to find some one on whom he may lay the blame and so relieve his own shoulders of their just load. This may be human nature, but it is

rather a poor brand. for all of that. Here this week we see a horse go out like a lion and win his race in straight heats. There, the next week, we see the same horse beaten by the same or very nearly the same, field in perhaps a second or two slower time. Immediately the horse’s former friends begin to cry fraud, and the driver and owner will be lucky if during the continuance of the race some uneasy piker does not entreat the judge, in language more or less convincing, that a gigantic fraud is being committed, and that the derrick ought to be applied at once. No allowance is made for the horse himself. Apparently his friends take him for a machine built of wood and iron, and not for a mass of flesh, blood, and nerves.

Are not horses entitled to their off days just as much as men and women ? What would these men who howl so loudly when they lose a few dollars say if they should be condemned in the bitterest and noisiest manner every time they come down to breakfast, feeling jnst a trifle off ? Would they think that any sort of fair treatment ? Hardly. Yet they don’t teem to allow the poor horse the same liberty they themselves demand. A horse ought no more to be expected to do the same day in and day out the season through than he should be expected to take wings, when pinched against the rail and pocketed, and fly over the heads of his antagonists to the wire, poise him on the edge of th? judge’s box, and demand an announcement in his favour. To expect the one is as ridiculous as to expect the other. Perhaps a draught horse may hold his form indefinitely till age breaks him down, but bo highly organised a being as the race horse runner or trotter must rot be expected to feel always the same, a slight chill, caused by even a momentary exposure to a cold draught of air, will destroy a horse’s chance to win a race, and there are a thtueand and one other things that tend in the same direction.

Would it not be well to give the horse his due’ and not inveigh so loudly against him, his owner, and his driver, because he cannot be kept keyed up and lubricated for an entire season like a locomotive.