WEIGHT-FOR-AGE RACES 41 



witch course, two miles two furlongs, in which the 

 young horses meet their elders, and the race is nearly 

 always won by a two-year-old — who is as a rule 

 worthless afterwards. Another race at the Houghton 

 Meeting, which always promises well and nearly 

 always disappoints expectation, is the Free Handicap 

 for Two-year-olds. Horses are not entered by their 

 owners for this stake. The handicapper takes the 

 best known two-year-olds and weights them according 

 to his estimate of their capacity, thus enabling one to 

 learn how they stand in the eyes of an impartial 

 authority. The field, however, very seldom includes 

 those that the lover of the Turf would chiefly desire 

 to see in antao-onism, 



WEIGHT-FOR-AGE RACES 



It has been seen that practically everything depends 

 upon the weight a horse carries. There is an old 

 saying that weight will bring together a donkey and a 

 Derby winner, and the extravagant assertion may be 

 accepted as tending to show how vast a difference a 

 horse's burden is recoo"nised as makino-. Weig"ht-for- 

 age races are of three varieties. In the first place 

 there is what may be called weight-for-age proper, in 

 which animals of the same age carry the same weight, 

 as in the Coventry Stakes at Ascot and the Cham- 

 pagne at Doncaster, for two-year-olds ; the five 

 " classic " races for three-year-olds, and a very few 

 stakes which linger for older horses. Here the only 



