8o THE TWO-MINUTE TROTTERS 



gant, but filling the bill as to what it means. It might be 

 said, however, that this is no effort to create the impression 

 that Peter Manning is homely, for he is not; he merely lacks 

 some of the frills that sometimes go with the turf stars, and 

 that is all there is to it. 



Peter Manning has done all his trotting with short toes, 

 shoes as light as possible and no toe weight, and a limited as- 

 sortment of boots. When he took his record of 2:061/2 at 

 three years he carried rubber quarter boots, but those were 

 soon discarded, so that his total boot equipment when he 

 raced and when he went his two-minute miles, consisted of 

 hind shin boots. Mr. Murphy hopes to some time be able to 

 drive him a fast mile with no boots of any sort, and while 

 he will not have to take many off^, the spectacle of a mile in 

 two minutes or better, perhaps a championship mile, by a 

 trotter without boots, will be something worth seeing. 



The front shoes of the champion weigh 6^0 ounces and 

 are bar shoes perfectly plain. The length of his front toes is 

 3% inches and the angle is 47. The hind shoes are 4^/2 

 ounce, square toed and swedged with heel extension and heel 

 calks turned up. For hard tracks a very light rim pad is used 

 under the front shoes. The hind shoes are fitted with bars 

 merely to strengthen them, and for no other purpose. 



In some of his races, the season Mr. Murphy was injured 

 and could not drive, Peter Manning was rigged with a head 

 pole, but for that a side strap was substituted, and its use is 

 accounted for by the fact that Peter is a trotter who some- 

 times quite easily gets out of line and is then apt to brush the 

 inside of his hind ankles. 



"Marque" has this interesting thing to say about the gait 

 of the champion: "Here is an observation I will submit as 

 an oddity in respect to Peter Manning's gait; a feature I have 

 discussed with trainers and upon which I have found them to 

 agree with me, and that is the fact that when jogging or trot- 

 ting along at medium speed, he appears to be gaited just the 

 same as when he is speeding. In other words, unlike practi- 

 cally all other fast trotters, he does not change his method of 

 gait when moving from slow into high speed — just moves his 

 legs faster, that's all. He has not the same sort of front 



