154 RACING. 



CHAPTER XL 



THREE-YEAR-OLDS. 



IT is obvious that the training of horses of three years and 

 upwards must often of necessity involve a large divergence from 

 the system pursued in the preparation of two-year-olds, and 

 afford even more scope to the trainer's art, owing to the greater 

 variety of courses over which the elder animals are called upon 

 to contend. 



It is true that the ' sixpenny five-furlong races ' are the staple 

 commodity of all race meetings, and will continue so to be 

 unless the Jockey Club is prepared enormously to curtail the 

 number of meetings, and thereby to run the risk of such an 

 outburst of popular indignation as can be evoked by a whole- 

 sale attack on large vested interests. But the fact remains, that 

 two races per diem of a mile and upwards are a legal obligation 

 in each day's racing, so that without taking into account the Two 

 Thousand, Derby, Oaks, Leger, the Cups, and other so-called 

 classic races, where considerable distance of ground has to be 

 compassed, a number of minor events come off every week 

 between March and November, for which a severer discipline 

 than that enforced on the sprinter is requisite. 



There never was and there never will be a rule of thumb 

 whereby horses can be trained for any course long or short, 

 though our forefathers appear to have imagined that a prepara- 

 tion as cruel as their system of heats, or as the distances over 

 which those heats were run, was the sine qua non of success. 

 Luckily for their horses there were very few meetings in 

 those days, which have passed away never to return ; and 



