102 CANADIAN TURF RECOLLECTIONS 



PAST AND PEESENT PROVINCE-BRED HORSES 



COMPARED. 



To hear many of the present lot of Canadian turfmen 

 talk you'd think the Canadian horses of twenty- five and 

 thirty years ago were all lobsters that couldn't win a 

 cheap selling race in these days. Of course those who 

 talk that way don't know anything about it, because the 

 majority of them were either wearing bib and tucker or 

 about sprouting into short pants, but they heard some- 

 body no wiser than themselves say so and, parrot-like, 

 they repeat the story. 



I can mention a few of the old-time duifers, as they 

 would call them, that were quite good enough to win a 

 full share of the money in present-day company. In 

 those days the tracks were many seconds slower than they 

 now are and the jockeys were scarcely up to the present 

 standard. Another thing, horses had to be trained in a 

 different fashion, owing to the fact that racing was a 

 much more severe game. There were no five-furlong 

 dashes then ; an occasional three-quarters ; plenty of mile 

 heats, two in three and three in five, and two-mile heats, 

 and this sort of programme demanded that a horse 

 should have condition as well as speed. No matter how 

 much of the latter he possessed, if he didn't have the 

 former, the other wouldn't win for him. 



I have seen more than one race in Canada when it took 

 seven heats of one mile each to decide the winner. There 

 was no rule then about a horse going to the stable if he 

 didn't win a heat in two or three, and it was a stubborn 

 fight to a finish and the survival of the fittest. I wonder 

 where the majority of our present-day sprinters would 

 be in one of those old-time gruelling struggles? The 

 chances are that one such race would knock them out for 



