70 FLAT-RACING EXPLAINED. 



horse was to be judged by takiug the best form ho 

 had given evidence of, and practically the worst, and 

 thereupon strike a sort of balance between the two. 

 This, as a means of getting at a horse's correct form, 

 might be satisfactory to a certain class of people, but 

 it strikes one as being unreliable, to say the least, 

 and I should think extremely haphazard into the 

 bargain. Whether this method of arriving at a 

 supposed just conclusion has been acted upon by 

 handicappers I cannot say with certainty, but I 

 should imagine it to be very doubtful. 



But the extraordinary thing about handicapping 

 is that it misses the mark in what it intends to 

 effect. If the idea of a handicap is to so adjust the 

 weights as to put all the horses engaged in the race 

 on an equal footing, and at the same time giA'e every 

 one a fair chance of success, that is just what it 

 does not do. This, no doubt, to a large number of 

 persons will read as probably somewhat strange, not 

 because they may not have thought out the subject 

 for themselves, but rather because it is directly 

 opposed to a system they may have been familiar 

 with, if not wholly satisfied with, practically all 

 their lives. 



It nmst be said, however, that handicaps on the 

 present system of adjusting weights fail in two very 

 material respects. First, they fail to equalize the 

 respective chances of the horses engaged in a race. 



