CHAPTER XXIV 



GREAT HANDICAP HORSES 



Handicapping by Weight unsatisfactory Great Weight-Carriers not 

 necessarily Great Instance Bendigo On the contrary, Minting 

 The White Knight and Willonyx below Classic Form Air Raid 

 Isonomy Minting and St Simon at 10 st. 7 Ib. each Would 

 the better Horse have won ? Count Mokronoski and Carlton 

 Sheen and Sterling Strange Theory about Young Gouty Time 

 Test, its Uses and Abuses The Puzzle of it English Courses 

 inaccurately measured Instance of the Goodwood Cup Course 



I HAVE always thought that the system of handi- 

 capping by weight is a very futile one for arriving 

 at the real racing merit of horses, unless we wish 

 to test them solely as weight-carriers, which may, perhaps, 

 be a reasonable idea. No one would ever dream of 

 handicapping pedestrians in such a way, but, of course, 

 it would be impracticable to have a field of horses start- 

 ing from different marks. Weighting them is, I take 

 it, the only way, but it leads to certain animals gaining 

 a great reputation for no other reason than that they 

 were able to win under heavy weights. There is a 

 great gulf fixed between any such reputation and that of 

 the really highest class horse. 



There have been class horses, such as Julius, Robert 

 the Devil and St Gatien, who were also weight-carriers, 

 as they proved in the Cesarewitch, but there have been 

 many distinguished weight-carriers who were anything 

 but class horses, and gained their distinction simply by 

 their ability to carry weight 



