CHAPTER X 



MATHEW DAWSON 



Mathew Dawson and the Admirable Ladas Lord Rosebery's Double 

 Trouble before the Two Thousand Guineas An Evening with 

 Mathew Dawson All Clear! Ladas with Gallican Needs no 

 Encouragement by a Better Horse Old Mat. is absolutely right 

 A Brilliant Horse and his Leger Race thrown away 



MY oldest and best friend among trainers was 

 that really great man, Mathew Dawson, with 

 whom I first became intimately acquainted in 

 the spring of Silvio's year, and the friendship grew 

 closer as the years passed. Lord Rosebery has himself 

 said that Mathew Dawson would have gone to the top 

 of the tree in any walk of life that he might have chosen, 

 and I am sure that this was so. Anyhow, as a trainer 

 he was unique, and I propose to give a few of my own 

 experiences of him in connection with the training of 

 Ladas, whom I shall always regard as a horse who has 

 been immeasurably underrated, just as Orme was. 



I saw Ladas win his first race as a two-year-old at 

 Epsom, and he did it in such brilliant style that the 

 late Colonel W. P. Thompson, of the Brookdale Stud, 

 U.S.A., asked me to try to buy him for 20,000 guineas. 

 This offer was futile, as I well knew it would be, and 

 Ladas continued to dominate the position until the next 

 spring, when there came news that something had gone 

 wrong with him and he had been stopped in his work. 

 This was eleven weeks before the Two Thousand Guineas, 

 and after a fortnight of suspense I went to Newmarket 

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