44 THE ENGLISH TURF 



a Biennial for four-year-olds of a mile and a half, and some 

 three or four two -year -old events. The meeting, in a 

 general way, is more poorly attended than any of the others, 

 but it enables visitors to get sight of such of the more 

 prominent candidates for the Two Thousand Guineas and 

 Derby as are trained at Newmarket, and it occasionally 

 brings out one of these favourites in one or other of the 

 races mentioned above. For instance, St. Frusquin won 

 the Column Produce Stakes a fortnight before he gained 

 classic honours in the Two Thousand Guineas, and Jeddah, 

 winner of the Derby in 1897, had previously won the Craven 

 Stakes. Provided the weather is fine, there is much to be 

 seen and acquired in the Craven week. One hears of horses 

 likely to win spring handicaps still to be decided, and 

 something is always learned of likely aspirants to two-year- 

 old fame. Then, if a prominent performer of the previous 

 season has turned roarer, this is the time and place to 

 find it out ; but perhaps the most important thing of all is 

 the discovering which stables are in form at the moment. 

 It is a curious circumstance in racing that few stables 

 preserve a regular equilibrium of form, and that this is 

 the case those who follow the horses trained in any one 

 or two particular stables well know. Moreover, both the 

 coming into and the going out of form are often, com- 

 paratively speaking, the work of a moment. A stable 

 has had, let us say, a run of what I call bad form, but 

 what the public and the sporting writers generally call 

 bad luck. It shelters horses that are known to be 

 good, on account of what they have done in the past. 

 They are expected to win all sorts of races, but one and 

 all unaccountably fail, and no one seems to exactly know 

 why. At last their owners (and the public) become tired 

 of backing them, and with many men they are shelved or 

 forgotten for the time being. " What is the good of backing 

 that ? the stable is dead out of form," we hear exclaimed ; 

 but the bad form comes to an end one day, and when it 

 is least expected one of the horses wins a good race, and 

 no one profits thereby except the men who stand by the 

 rails and shout for their living. 



