LAYING UP HEATS. 293 



ning the race, and you will not find this to be the case 

 so often as some seem to think. Sometimes a horse, 

 as I have remarked, will not do himself justice until 

 he trots a heat or two in company, and in that case 

 the practice is justifiable. Again, if you believe that 

 one or two horses in the field may have more speed 

 than you have, it will sometimes prove good policy to 

 let them go out and fight one another for a heat or 

 two, after which you can go at them with an advan- 

 tage. But these are exceptional cases. To have 

 every thing to my liking, I want the horse ready to go 

 right out for the mone3\ In general, if you can win 

 at all you can win in straight heats ; and that is the 

 clean, straightforward way to do it, if possible, besides 

 being very much better for your horse. In four cases 

 out of five when heats are laid up they are laid up 

 with reference to the pool box. The motive is gen- 

 erally not to make surer of winning the race, but to 

 influence the betting, and this very thing has in a 

 measure tended to disgust the public with trotting. 

 On the question of betting I need not speak. That 

 has nothing to do with training. If a man wants to 

 bet on a horse-race and bets his own money, I cannot 

 see that he does anything wrong. Xo moral or civil 

 law is offended. But the trouble is that too many 

 make winning the race a secondary consideration to 

 winning in the pool-box, and therein is a great wrong. 

 The first duty of a driver in a race is to win if he can, 

 and the man who goes out with the idea of laying up 

 heats and working the pool-box uppermost in his mind, 

 and making the matter of winning races subordinate 

 considerations, is simply betraying, deceiving and rob- 



