NEWMARKET 



isn't a circus ; it should first suit the horses and all 

 other things come afterwards. WTiat does it matter 

 when horses have to be tried out whether the finer 

 points of the race cannot be seen until the horses are 

 nearing home ? There has been a real test of merit. 

 It astonished me when I first saw it, that wonderful 

 Heath, and I never slackened in enthusiasm. I wish 

 to goodness I was riding there this afternoon — ^the 

 Second Spring Meeting is in full swing. We have no 

 turf tracks in America. At Sheepshead Bay there is 

 a grass inner track on which perhaps one race a day 

 is run, but it is — nothing. 



Newmarket is extraordinary, and if a jockey will 

 keep his line, trying to get on the right strip where the 

 brush harrow has been, there can be confidence that, 

 if at the right time the proper effort is made, a boy 

 can do his horse justice. Compare it with any other 

 course in England, why — the idea is absurd. Epsom 

 is a joke but a fine sight-seeing track. It has often 

 been a wonder to me that so many good horses have 

 won the Derby, but I suppose it is that a good horse 

 can race under any conditions. The test of stamina at 

 Epsom too comes in on account of that uphill bit 

 at the beginning of the Epsom mile and a half : many 

 a horse has lost the race there. I have said how I 

 threw the Oaks away on Sibola. That downhill well- 

 worn-out grass at Epsom can be a real danger in 

 summer : it is more providential luck than anything 

 else that a jockey is not killed every meeting. Despite 

 the turns at Sandown Park it is not so easy, that rise 

 at the finish finding out far more horses than, for 

 instance, Kempton, which ends on the dead flat with a 

 breather at the turn. Hurst Park is severe on young 

 horses, and so is Newmarket, when they finish at the 

 Stands. But England is the place for racing, while 



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