My Racing Adventures 



— it is good enough to bet on as if there were no 

 settling day — small wonder that the poor trainer 

 plays havoc with such thatch as remains. 



His dreams, his most horrible dreams, are of 

 bad legs. It would be easy, indeed, to train 

 race-horses if they were all perfectly sound, a 

 gratuitous hypothesis, but, like men, many have 

 a screw or two loose in unsuspected places. 

 When we ask them a serious question, they say 

 " Yes " or " No," " Not to-day, baker," emphati- 

 cally, any other reply being impracticable in the 

 trying circumstances — it is a case of dot and 

 carry one when our hopes are rampant — and the 

 response is, as hinted, often final — I mean fatal. 

 Just as we are preparing to bet with animation, 

 perhaps on credit, bang goes the "swinger." 



A curious fact to be noted in this association 

 is that many good race-horses have bad legs ; 

 whilst, if you get an animal that could not win 

 a saddle and bridle at a country fair with a 

 postage stamp on his back, you could not break 

 him down by galloping him persistently on the 

 hard road. Such are the ironies of a trainer's 

 portion. They are to be scheduled amongst the 

 manifold inconsistencies which help to make his 

 life so intensely speculative. I have been through 

 the mill. One learns to take the rough with 



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