HOW THE DERBY WAS LOST 317 



and have said ever since, that it was I that lost the 

 Derby, and not the horse that did so. Nor is it any 

 satisfaction to me that this great opportunity came to 

 me, and was let pass by against my better judgment. 

 Had I ridden the horse as I knew at the time he ought 

 to have been ridden, I should, I believe, have scored the 

 victory. But I was overruled, as people often are, by 

 the opinions of others opinions, no doubt, worthy of 

 great consideration, being those, in my case, of my father 

 and my brother John. The latter said : ' No horse could 

 make running up the hill and win, and your horse must 

 have good speed or he would not have won the Two 

 Thousand so easily.' My father generally concurred in 

 this, saying, ' that if Nimrod made a good pace up the 

 hill and mine took it on from there, he would win.' My 

 own idea had been to let Promised Land make the pace 

 for himself from the start, and do the work to the finish ; 

 and I am perfectly certain that it was his not doing so 

 that lost him the race, and nothing else. Nimrod was 

 18 Ib. worse than the one he was started to make the 

 running for, and, of course, could not go fast enough to 

 make the pace good enough for him, or indeed for many 

 others in it ; and the race was virtually run but a mile 

 after I took up the running, and kept the lead till near 

 the winning-post, when the other, which had always 

 been going faster than mine, came and just beat me for 

 speed. 



Of course, many reasons were forthcoming to show 

 why Promised Land did not win. One very cogent and 

 widely accepted, because so plausible and fair a one, was 

 that I should have won less by my horse's winning the 

 race than I did through his losing it. The foundation 

 for this was as truthful as in the case of most similar 

 assertions ; inasmuch as I stood to win 22,000 if he 



