3f4 STEEPLE-CHASING. 



owners and trainers. What is the good of assiduously schooling 

 a chaser over a fair course at home if when he gets to the post 

 in the real race there is no scope for the exercise of the lessons 

 that have been laboriously instilled into him, nothing but a 

 sort of hurdle-race over hurdles of a new pattern that can be 

 galloped over precisely after the fashion of a hurdle-race ? 



Theoretically there was possibly something to be said for the 

 unguarded open ditch before the fence. It was designed to check 

 the headlong speed at which chases are run, to make the rider 

 collect his horse for an obstacle that could not safely be chanced, 

 and took some jumping. Practically what was the result ? One 

 or two of the more reckless riders would chance it. Sometimes 

 they fell and a fall here was likely to be a bad one for man and 

 horse. Sometimes, however, they got over and, in this event, 

 they gained so much by their recklessness that the more cautious 

 horseman, who sought to obviate the danger by going steadily, 

 ran a great risk of losing so much ground that the loss of the 

 race necessarily followed. What was the consequence ? All 

 were bound, if it were a two-mile race, to gallop at it in the 

 same fashion. This was neither a test of good horsemanship 

 nor of a good horse. It was merely thrusting riders into a 

 position of needless danger, and served no good purpose. 



The way to restore the popularity of steeple-chasing is 

 obvious. The best class of patrons of the sport have grown 

 indifferent about it, because there is so little work for the real 

 steeple- chaser who can gallop over the Liverpool course to 

 do. and it is not worth while to train and keep him to be cut 

 down over a two-mile course by a horse that could not jump a 

 fair course but can gallop the distance over the fences now in 

 vogue. If there were more chases which a sportsman might 

 reasonably feel an ambition to win, there would doubtless be 

 chasers forthcoming to do battle for them. Such contests 

 must be run over fair-sized fences, and over a distance of 

 ground which is a real test of a horse's stamina and does not 

 bear the same proportion to what a steeple-chase should be as 

 a five-furlong dash does to a reasonable race. 



