THE SECRET OF STAYING POWER 119 



his back, with a run that will for ever make him famous, had for a sire Eudorus. 

 a brilliant horse for a mile, especially when that mile was in the mud! 



The answer to these objections is that, just as a genius sometimes comes 

 from a back-lane; just as a poet is born in a hovel; just as some great orator 

 comes from a peasant stock; so with a sprinter for a sire we get sometimes a 

 stayer. This would have been explained by Darwin by his theory of Atavism 

 — throwing back to a former ancestor for hidden powers — and this is a 

 reasonable explanation. Thus we may reasonably say that David, through 

 his granddam Wakeful, did inherit some of her ancestor Musket's power to 

 stay. But this leads up to another explanation that can be put forth with 

 plenty of examples to back it up — i.e., that the horse may get his staying 

 powers from his mother: that is, that he has inherited his dam's heart, not his 

 sire's. Eurythmic must be regarded as an excellent example of this, for, as 

 we have just mentioned, Eudorus was but a good miler, and his other sons do 

 not show staying powers in spite of the fact that Eusebius won a Derby and a 

 V.R.C. St. Leger, both, however, in shocking time! But when we come to 

 examine the pedigree of Bob Cherry, the dam of Eurythmic, we find that 

 staying is spelt in every line of her pedigree, being by Bodadil from Ardea 

 by Wallace. 



Now that I have enunciated my theory, let me suggest why it is that 

 some horses begin their career in brilliant fashion, and look from their first 

 perforrnances as though they would stay, and yet go off and never come back. 

 My opinion is that some of these horses have poor hearts and are made too 

 much use of during their two-year-old period; while some horses during their 

 early three-year-old career are asked to do more than their hearts are fit to 

 do, as a consequence their hearts become dilated They fail time after time, 

 and are consequently called rogues; in reality, they may be quite honest 

 animals, but their strained hearts cannot respond when called upon — Bigaroon, 

 I think, is an example. 



I regard the failure of Eurythmic, when matched against Beauford, 

 as an instance of the dilated heart. Eurythmic was asked to carry 

 the record weight of 10.7 in the Futurity Stakes. He won, and critics 

 said that it was merely a welter race, and that he had nothing to beat. When 

 he came to Sydney to run against Beauford, almost every trainer gave their 

 opinion that Eurythmic would win. What happened? He pulled up 

 absolutely in distress, and a few days later was beaten by David and Furious 

 over two miles. The real explanation is that no matter what may be said 

 to the contrary, Eurythmic did not have a true staying heart, having inherited 

 It from his mother; that it probably became strained in the Futurity and 

 probably dilated, and that while he may win at a mile or a little more, 1 

 think it unlikely that he will ever win at two miles again.* 



Let me make my meaning about the dilated heart quite clear. First of 

 all, one must understand that the heart is a pump; that its walls are composed 

 of muscle— though not of the same kind of muscle that the flesh of the arms 

 and legs is made of. Then the valves of this wonderful pump are made of 

 very strong tissue almost as strong as fine canvas. Considering the amount of 

 work that the heart is called upon to do, getting no entire rest either night 

 or day, the wonder is that it can keep on for sixty or seventy years in man, and 

 twenty or niore in the horse, in such a very efficient manner. 



Now, if a man who has been working in an office gets "run down" from 

 overwork, and takes it into his head to go off for a holiday, and part of that 

 holiday is devoted to climbing mountains, he will often come back to his 



*This was written in April, 1922. 



