THE SECRET OF STAYING POWER 121 



some means he got into a bad position, and when he entered the straight he 

 seemed to have no chance of beating Cetigne. Then he made a wonderful 

 effort; it w^as the effort of a horse with a stout heart, and he put every ounce 

 of reserve he had into the final run, and inch by inch he gained on the 

 brilliant, honest Cetigne, and won by a nose! Never was a braver effort ever 

 seen on a racecourse, and I felt that he had to thank his Wallace heart — not 

 to mention what his dam (Glass Queen) may have added — for his victory. 



This victory made him an odds-on favourite for the Derby, and Bobby 

 Lewis, thinking that he had a real Wallace stayer to handle, determined to 

 "make the running" and knock Cetigne out; but he failed for two reasons. 

 In the first place, he hurried his mount most unwisely for the first half-mile, 

 forgetting what Fred Archer had laid down as a rule, that if you hurry a 

 stayer enough for the first half-mile you w^ill kill him dead; and, in the second 

 place, Bobby not being a pathologist did not know anything about dilated 

 hearts, so he evidently took it for granted that his mount's heart was of the 

 true Wallace brand. But he found to his dismay that he had made so much 

 use of his horse that he died in his hands in the last fifty yards and Cetigne 

 w^on. The effort certainly did not do Cetigne's non-staying heart any good, 

 for he never ran a decent race over a distance afterwards, though he lived to 

 win the most dramatic race ever seen at Randwick when he won the Craven 

 Plate in record time in 1918. Now, though Cetigne had a non-staying heart 

 — Grafton being no sire of stayers — ^yet he must have had a very sound heart 

 to win a Newmarket six furlongs with 9 stone in 1 . 1 3^, a Villiers mile in 1 .381^ 

 with 9.4 in the saddle, and lower Woorak's Craven Plate record of 2.53^ to 

 2.4i; and yet he could not run a mile and a-half with success in good company. 



Let me say that a heart that is dilated may recover if the animal is 

 properly rested. Wallace Isinglass being bred to have a staying heart on his 

 sire's side as well as on his dam's side, was judiciously nursed by his rich 

 owner, and, as a result, as a four-year-old and a five-year-old he did well over 

 a distance, and lived to defeat Desert Gold at two miles in Melbourne, and 

 to run Lanius and Westcourt to a neck over the Cumberland Stakes two miles. 



Let us see if we can learn anything of use from the above remarks. The 

 chief lesson that is to be learnt is: That you can't make a stayer out of a horse 

 that has not inherited a staying heart, train him as you will. The old ideal 

 that if you wanted a horse to run two miles you had to train him over that 

 distance was absurd. You must, of course, get the animal's muscles in a fit 

 condition, and that can be done by slow, long work, and by running him at 

 a fast pace from time to time over a mile or so; but you can't make his heart 

 carry him two miles at the requisite pace if he does not inherit the proper kind 

 of heart, no matter how you train him ! It is quite true that a horse in some 

 cases stays better the older he gets, because his heart improves; still the fact 

 remains that the true stayer is horn, not made. 



After all in staying it is the pace that tells; in other words, a great stayer 

 must have the power to run at a great pace all the way and to have something 

 out of the common to finish with; and unless the horse has an inherited staying 

 heart it is quite impossible for him to finish well. When we think of the run 

 that Poitrel with 9.9 on his back made when Kennaquhair won the Sydney Cup 

 in 3.22 f; when we think of the run he made in the Spring Stakes when he 

 beat Desert Gold in 2.31 one year, and Gloaming in the same race the 

 following year; when we think how he finished in his Melbourne Cup, carrying 

 ten stone, then we realise what a true staying heart is capable of doing when 

 called upon. 



It has often been observed that great stayers are wont to hang behind 

 in the early stages of a long-distance race. No one, for instance, ever saw 



