RACING 



of the first three heats was won by a different horse, so a fourth, 

 in which these three started, was run to decide it. At the 

 Carhsle meeting of May 1761, nine four-year-olds started for a 

 £50 stake, two-mile heats, weight 9 stone. Cadabora won the 

 first ; Stella, the second ; Cadabora and Heart of Oak ' were 

 so near together the judges could not tell which won ' the 

 third ; Bold Burton won the fourth ; Cadabora and Bold 

 Burton ran a dead heat for the fifth ; and the sixth and last 

 was won by Cadabora, Bold Burton second, and Stella third. 

 In their later days these long heats were not always ridden 

 out from start to finish. Nimrod, writing of the early decades 

 of the nineteenth century, says : ' So much is the system of a 

 four-mile heat disliked, that when it does occur the horses often 

 walk the first two miles.' Sir Charles Bunbury is said to have 

 been the man who brought about the discontinuance of races 

 in four-mile heats. 



Thus were handicaps made under mid-eighteenth-century 

 rules : 'A Handy-Cap Match is for A. B. and C. to put an 

 equal sum into a Hat. C, which is the Handy-Capper, makes 

 a match for A. and B., which when perused by them they put 

 their Hands into their Pockets and draw them out closed, then 

 they open them together, and if both have money in their 

 hands, the match is confirmed : if neither have money it is no 

 Match. In both Cases the Handy-Capper draws all the money 

 out of the Hat : but if one has Money in his Hand and the other 

 none, then it is no Match : and he that has the money in his 

 Hand is entitled to the Deposit in the Hat.' 



The Handy-Capper under these conditions had induce- 

 ment to make a match which should be accepted by both 

 parties. 



The thoroughbred of this period, it is hardly necessary to 

 remark, was a very different animal from his modern descend- 

 ant. As Sir Walter Gilbey has pointed out in his Thorough-bred 

 and Other Ponies, ' fourteen hands was the normal or average 

 height of the race-horse ' during the latter half of the eighteenth 

 century. The racing career of the thoroughbred then began 



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