A HORSE’S JUMP.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 692, 11 June 1903, Page 19

A HORSE’S JUMP.

In steepleohasing it is interesting to observe a horse jump a fence, and note the precise point on the “ wing ” of the jump which shows how higli it raises its body to get over safely. This is found to be very much lower than usually imagined. A fifteen hand horse is five feet high, and its body is two and a-half feet from the ground; therefore, in order to clear a fence four and ahalf feet high, the horse would have to raise its body only two feet. But since it can, and generally does, brush through at least six inches of the hedge, there is no necessity for a horse rising more than eighteen inches at the fences, Now, if you lower these jumps so that the horse may not have to rise at all to clear them, you actually make them dangerous. In some of the old courses they have done away with the wall, the bank, the board fence, etc., in their stead remain about eighteen inches to two feet of the old obstacle, surmounted by a foot and a-half of earth and a lot of brush These obstacles, notwithstanding the fact that they are practically alike —a brush jump with an earth base —are still called the “ wall,” the “ bank ” and the “ board fence.” This recalls the story told a celebrated English gentleman rider, “ Doggy ” Smith, who was asked by one of the stewards ae Sandown Park, after a steeplechase in which he had ridden, how he liked the course. He replied : “ Oh, the eourse is all right. But I say, you ought to have a lot of labels made with ‘ This is a wall,’ ‘ This is a bank’, * This a is water jump ’ printed on them; then we might think we’d been steeplechasing, which is more than I can think now.”