158 THE ENGLISH TURF 



generally to be done at foot pace, unless the cabman goes 

 a mile or two round. This race, with some five or six 

 others mentioned elsewhere, go to prove how much more 

 deeply imbedded in the North is the love of racing than 

 in the South, for at no Southern meeting, except Epsom, 

 can a similar crowd be seen, and, as at York and Doncaster, 

 it is the horses which principally attract, though there used 

 to be a sort of fair in the centre of Chester racecourse until 

 it became an enclosed meeting. Now the fair is outside 

 the course, and since a toll was levied the crowd is not quite 

 so large. Still there are many thousands of visitors to the 

 city every Cup day, and I should be inclined to place the 

 race as the third most attractive of the year, the Derby 

 and St. Leger claiming first and second places. 



During the middle of the century the race for the Chester 

 Cup was perhaps the most popular handicap of the year. 

 Then it fell away in popularity, and at one time looked 

 like going out altogether. However, new blood was in- 

 troduced into the management ; the stands were to a large 

 extent remodelled, the course enclosed, and the value of 

 the stakes increased, and the upshot is that the race fairly 

 holds its own again. At one time betting on the Chester 

 Cup was carried on all through the winter, long lists of 

 quotations being published almost daily. Those were the 

 days of deep-laid schemes on the part of a certain section 

 of owners, when horses were bottled up for the race during 

 the whole of the previous season, and when anything could 

 be backed to win ^^50,000 before the weights appeared. 

 The modern system of racing hardly lends itself to this 

 kind of game, and as ante-post betting gradually decreased 

 the Chester Cup became only a second-rate handicap. It 

 has now assumed its old place, from a sporting, if not from 

 a betting point of view, and as a natural result the class 

 of competitors has improved very much in late years. 



It is impossible to write of the Chester Course as a good 

 one, but it has one very strong point in its favour, and that 

 is that the horses are always well in view, they being less than 

 half a mile from the stands at any portion of the race. The 

 course is quite flat and circular, and only a few yards over a 



