STEEPLECHASING. 



611 



National Hunt Steeplechase as a kind of appendix to the National ; but the 

 former was a miserable affair, three runners only ; Derby welcomed the Committee 

 in 1879 (the second race on an inclosed course), in 1882, 1887, and 1892. Hurst 

 Park was selected in 1891, 1896, and 1899; Gatwick, for the first, and, up to the 

 present, the only time in 1898; while Melton was visited in 1864, 1883, and 1901. 

 The other inclosed grounds over which the National Hunt Steeplechase has been 

 run are Four Oaks Park, near Birmingham, in 1881, and Leicester in 1884. 

 Newmarket was perhaps the earliest steeplechase ground in England in the days 



" Shannon Lass" (Grand National, 1902). 



of King Charles II.'s wild-goose chase; and the late Colonel H. McCalmont 

 inaugurated a meeting on the Links, and to Newmarket went the National Hunt 

 Steeplechase in 1897. It is likely that more steeplechasing will be seen there in 

 future than has ever been the case before; but the meeting of 1897 was noteworthy 

 from the fact that for the first time in the history of the race it was won by a 

 foreign owner, with a foreign-bred horse, ridden by a foreign rider. The winner 

 was Vicomte cle Buisseret's Nord Quest, a stallion by Gamin, out of La I'a^nc, 

 bred in France, and ridden to victory by Mons. Morand. The Vicomte was a 



