BEND OR 201 



A better winner was found in 1880, and this was 

 Bend Or, of, I suppose, imperishable memory ; and he 

 certainly won, though that he was extraordinarily lucky 

 to beat Robert the Devil no one can dispute. That, 

 however, does not matter. Bend Or, like Hermit, 

 became a much greater stallion than ever he was a 

 race-horse, and he continued the Doncaster line of 

 Stockwell in magnificent style. He was not a great 

 Derby winner, but he attained to greatness. 



Great horse or not, I shall never forget his race for 

 the Derby, which I, being active, witnessed from the 

 start, and all the way round the furzes then ran to 

 the spur of the hill and saw all the rest, except the 

 last fifty yards. Robert the Devil, viewed from where 

 I could see them, was like a hare followed by terriers, 

 going away with great stotting bounds just as he was 

 minded, and when in that last fifty yards they passed 

 out of sight it was impossible to imagine that anything 

 else could win. There was just a momentary vision 

 of Fred Archer making an effort but what could he 

 do? The numbers went up and he had achieved the 

 apparently impossible : Bend Or had won. There 

 can, however, be no doubt that Robert the Devil was 

 the better race-horse very much better over a longer 

 course. 



Iroquois, the champion of 1881, was a hard, wiry 

 beast, and a good one too, or he could not have stood 

 the work which Jacob Pincus gave him ; but he was not 

 a patch on Foxhall, his American compatriot, who won 

 the Cesarewitch and Cambridgeshire that year. But 

 Foxhall himself was really no wonder, as was shown at 

 Ascot the following year. Iroquois returned to America 

 and made little mark as a stallion. Lord Rosebery 



