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A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



States, where it had the best possible chances of success, and has already been 

 replaced by an electric bell. Almost every other country seemed to possess a better 

 pattern than that hitherto used in England, where the anxiety of the authorities 

 to prevent the undoubted tediousness often occasioned by the old starting with the 

 Hag seemed to blind them to the fact that in introducing a machine for the starter 

 they had not changed the thoroughbred horse into a piece of machinery as well. 

 Trainers were firmly admonished to teach their youngsters to face the gate. Many 

 of them succeeded so well that breeders began, to complain that good animals were 

 being beaten by inferior two-year-olds, who had learned the knack of getting off 

 at once. But when these same clever quadrupeds got their trainers into trouble 



in their next season, it 

 became clear that it was 

 rather the fault of the 

 horse than the man, and 

 that many animals would 

 not face the gate at all. 



, vi. The Rule of Racing ran 



f tfl A / 



1 that 'horses must be 







" Caiman" (1896, U.S.A.) 



started from a walk." 

 The machine introduced 

 the alteration that they 

 " must be started from a 

 stand," from a stationary 

 pivot into a racing gal- 

 loping stride within a 



second, a feat which very few indeed were able to accomplish so successfully as 

 Simdridge usually did. The result of this inability is a loss of three-quarters 

 of a length in the first few strides, and four or five lengths in a hundred yards, 

 an almost impossible handicap on courses like Epsom and Brighton. I should 

 not like to say that the alteration was due to no successor to Mr. McGeorge 

 and his authoritative flag having been forthcoming, though he was certainly a 

 man whom no one could have excelled as a starter. Very few animals indeed 

 will stand, like Rock Sand as a three-year-old, with their nose on the webbing- 

 waiting contentedly for the lever. If the gate has to be used at all, it must be 

 improved, for such a fiasco as that of the Wokingham Stakes at Ascot is not 



