1 88 RACING. 



where a real two-mile trial of flat-racers is unheard of, and an 

 old-fashioned winding up, even for a Cesarewitch, almost a 

 thing of the past. Nevertheless it is equally possible to overdo 

 a system or underdo a racehorse. Of course we are all much 

 wiser than our fathers, and our grandfathers would have no 

 chance whatever against our keen sagacity. Our T.Y.C. 

 horses are certainly for the most part pictures of robust 

 health ; they travel all over the country, carry condition, and 

 sometimes go on winning races from early Lincoln to late 

 Manchester in a way that would have astonished the men of 

 old time. Yet though our ancestors have doubtless much to 

 learn from us, are we not expressly warned against attempting 

 to instruct them in the art of egg-suction .^ We, in fact, admit by 

 implication that they did understand that part of life's business. 

 So why not go a little farther and confess that they were not 

 altogether fools in the matter of getting their horses ready to 

 run over those long courses to which their racing was chiefly 

 confined? Does not recent experience point to this con- 

 clusion ? Setting aside the Cup races, for which there is never 

 a field and seldom a pace, and which, therefore, are not 

 real tests of training, can it be said that the turf metropolis 

 holds its own, or even makes a fair show, over the severer 

 courses? Take the Cesarewitch — the typical long distance 

 race of the year — for which we should naturally suppose the 

 home trained ones to have, at least, an even chance against 

 the strangers. Since 1882, when, as before related, the tenderly 

 treated Corrie Roy won this prize, it has only twice been 

 retained at Newmarket — in 1884 with St. Gatien, a quite 

 exceptionally good horse, and again in 1890 with Sheen, who, 

 be it remembered, was prepared by T. Jennings, sen., perhaps 

 the one trainer at head-quarters true to the traditions in which 

 he was educated, viz. that it was as well to break a horse 

 down as not to send him along in his work with such a task 

 before him as that 2 m. 2 f. 35 yds. 



Apropos of the elder Jennings, it is not often that a man 

 has under his care at the same time two such good horses and 



