VALUE OF THE HORSES Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the British Turf in the loth century than the enormous increase in the intrinsic value of the best bred and the highest class horses. This applies to the fashionable stallion, the notable winner, the successful brood mare, the well-bred shapely foal boasting of immaculate parentage and promise for the future. Let us examine the factors that have been at work. There were some five-figure prizes to be won before the century began but they were not associated with the classic races. While such prizes have shown curtailment the values of the classic races have been enhanced. For instance, while in 1899 the Princess of Wales's Stakes and the Jockey Club Stakes, both decided at Newmarket, were each worth f io,000, their respective values to the winners in 1928 were £2,790 and L5,687. And the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park has more than held its position in that respect. From being "merely" a ten thousand pounder in 1899, its value to Lord Derby who won the race with Fairway in 1928 was L13,306. When we examine the increase in the values of the classic races, again taking 1899 as the closing year of the last century, we find that the Duke of Westminster's Flying Fox won what has always been called the "Triple Crown," that is to say the Two Thousand Guineas, the Derby and St. Leger and those races brought in respectively and 4,050. Lord M. Beresford's Sibola, winner of the One Thousand Guineas in the same year secured £3,800; Musa, the winner of the Oaks for Mr. Douglas Baird, won £4,150. Compare those figures with the winnings of the classic horses of 1928. Flamingo (Two Thousand Guineas) L10,945; his Majesty's Scuttle (One Thousand Guineas) £8,470; Fe'stead (the Derby) Iii ,6o5 ; Fairway (St. Leger) These figures indicate one of the causes of the amazing advancement in the prices of bloodstock. It may be true enough that the chief competing buyers in this country are only a com paratively few very wealthy men of whom the Aga Khan, Lord Woolavington, Lord Dewar, Lord Glanely, Lord Beaverbrook, the Hon. Esmond Harmsworth, Captain Arnold Wills, Sir Victor Sassoon and Major J. S. Courtauld have been conspicuous since the war. It is, however, also true that the demands from abroad, chiefly America and France, have grown. Especially is this true of America to which country, with its extremely wealthy breeders and owners, have gone some of our best mares, yearlings and foals as well as a number of notable sires. Flying Fox, on the death of his breeder and owner, the Duke of Westminster, was purchased by the French breeder, M. E. Blanc, for the sum of 37,500 guineas. It was given at auction on the same day as a yearling by Persim mon from a mare named Ornament, to be known afterwards as Sceptre, which made 10,00o guineas as a yearling.
When some years ago Tracery was sold to South America by his owner and breeder, the late August Belmont, who had bred and raced the horse in England, he received no less than £53,000. The price of Flying Fox may still be a record for the sale ring, but then no Derby winner has entered the sale ring since. Ard Patrick was sold to Germany for £21,000 in 1903, Rock Sand went to America for £25,000, Minoru went to Russia for a sum said to be under £20,000, and since then the only sale of a Derby winner was the one already related of Captain Cuttle to Italy. All these were private deals. Nothing is more certain than that any Derby winner of modern times, or such high class St. Leger winners as Solario and Fairway, would certainly fetch more than 150,00o if sent into the sale ring.
In 2927 the Aga Khan paid 14,000 guineas for a yearling, afterwards named Aftab, by the Derby winner Papyrus from Sundart, but Af tab could not be raced as a two-year-old. The same buyer is understood to have paid L21,000 in a private trans action for two yearlings bred at the National Stud in Ireland. One of them, a colt by Hurry On from Ecurie, is said to have repre sented £17,000 of the huge outlay. It also could not be raced. Whereas 172 yearlings were sold at Doncaster in 1910 for a total of 93,395 guineas the record total was reached in 1926 with the marvellous aggregate of 344,990 guineas for 325 yearlings, or about $5,400 each.
If the prices of yearlings have soared, so also have the prices of mares, which in addition to admirable records on the race course are well-bred and have been mated with those high class, high-fee stallions referred to. The climax, however, was reached for the sale of English bloodstock at the December sales at Newmarket in 1928 when a great new record was created. Five days of sales realised an aggregate of 474,594 guineas, which is by a long way the highest total recorded ever since the sales began in 1885. The young mare Dian made 14,500 guineas, and her own mother, Diadem, though fourteen years old, made io,000 guineas. A third brood mare named Bracket, winner of the Cesarewitch in 1920, made 11,00o guineas, and in this case the buyer was Mr. Esmond. She was bought for France; the other two were retained by English buyers. A record price at these sales in 1928 was paid for a foal, a colt by Solario, though one of the first crop of foals by that sire, fetching 5,000 guineas. The youngster's breeder was Sir Abe Bailey, who that year disposed of the whole of his big holding of mares, yearlings, foals and horses in training for an aggregate of 170.000 guineas, or about $867,000.
Developments in Training and Riding Methods.—During the nineteenth century, and especially in the first half of it, horses were able to race over much longer distances than are favoured to-day. They must have been horses of splendid constitution, soundness, courage, and, indeed, of all those virtues which have been transmitted through generations to the racehorse of to-day. They certainly had far more to endure. Their stabling would be comparatively crude and rough compared with the stabling of to-day. They seem to have been raced for endurance rather than for speed, though, if the times of races can be relied upon then, it is certain they did not lack the capacity to gallop fast as well as stay well. In the very early days they had, of course, to be walked to distant meetings, and when walking was the only means of access they could not venture far beyond the borders of the county in which they were bred. That is an explanation of how there came to be so many meetings clustered in a recognized horse breeding "country" as for example Yorkshire.
The racehorse of to-day is a pampered creature whose indi vidual tastes and whims are studied. Hygiene and sanitation enter into the construction and maintenance of up-to-date stables and studs, and one cannot doubt that while the thoroughbred race horse in the process of evolution has put on height, he has also become speedier. His temperament may be more highly strung, but in these days of vastly more racing, and greater competition, the call on the nervous reserves of horses is greater. It is not the case that we have more bad tempered horses. Rather is it true that they are more temperamental and susceptible to the big demands made on them.
It is more than probable that the revolution in the methods of jockeyship have been responsible for those calls on the natural nervous resources of the thoroughbred racehorse. In the old days jockeys rode with long stirrup leathers, and while they were willing to make the pace a dawdle at the outset they would sprint home in the closing stages. The most famous British jockeys, before the arrival of the Americans with their new methods, were Fred Archer, Johnny Osborne, Harry Custance and Morn ington Cannon. The first mentioned rode 6 winners in one day and 257 winners in one year, and such was the impression made by Archer's skill that he was said to round the famous Tattenham corner in the Derby course with one leg over the rails. The real revolutionary was the American Sloan, who came to England in the closing years of the last century to ride for Lord William Beresford. He began to win a great number of races, some of them on horses that had been regarded as hopeless and on which leading English jockeys of the period had failed time after time. What he did was to pull up the stirrup leathers and throw the weight of his crouching body forward onto the withers. Then the horse, apparently liking the new distribution of weight, was permitted to race from the start and win without being robbed of that reserve necessary for the finish. From that time the great change-over came. English jockeys copied his example, and the first to do so were the first to benefit. Other American jockeys came and so the method became general. D. Maher was a par ticularly polished exponent of it, and, indeed, he rode three Derby winners and became the leading jockey of his day. Apprentices were taught to ride in this way, and so we have had champion jockeys in Frank Wootton, W. Higgs, S. Donoghue, Weston, Elliott and Gordon Richards who have never known any other way of riding a racehorse. There will never be a reversion to the old method for the handicap would be too enormous and the horse would have no chance ; but we may be quite certain that the Sloan methods do take more out of a horse. The fact of being expected to be racing at his top speed as soon as possible after the start and thereafter having to hold his place must take a lot out of horses, especially sprinters.
It is scarcely possible in the space at the disposal of the writer to enumerate those famous horses which either on the racecourse or at the stud have done so much to make Turf history since, say, the days long ago of Eclipse. The names of Pot-8-os, Bird catcher, St. Albans, Stockwell, Bend Or, Kendal, Ormonde, Cyl lene, Gallinule, Lord Lyon, Hampton, Ayrshire, Newminster, Hermit, Galopin, St. Simon (all tracing back to Eclipse), the descendants of Herod (including The Tetrarch), and the progeny of Matchem occur to the mind. The names of Ormonde and St. Simon are familiar to the present generation because of their prowess on the racecourse, on which they were never beaten, and the rivalry of their ardent supporters. It is, however, beyond question that the name of St. Simon will endure the longer for the reason that he made a great and illustrious name for himself as a sire at the stud. Among many famous breeding mares may be mentioned Lily Agnes, the dam of Ormonde and ancestor of the famous family of racehorses bred and raced by the late Duke of Westminster. Famous sires of recent years include Spearmint, who sired Spion Kop, winner of the Derby of 1920, Flamboyant the sire of Flamingo, and Phalerns the sire of Fairway.