view raw text
GREAT CHANGES IN ENGLISH RACING There has been a great change In the character of English racing in the last fifty years Away back in 17S3 there were held in the United King ¬ dom ninetynine race meetings Of these fiftyeight have been entirely abandoned In 1845 there were 138 meetings held of which eightytwo are now abandoned abandonedAt At the present time says Baillys Magazine we have ninetytwo flat race meetings that is those held exclusively under Jockey Club rules and 155 steeplechase meetings under the rules of the Na ¬ tional Hunt Committee CommitteeThe The immense increase of steeplechase meetings and the abandonment of many oldfashioned tlat racing meetings which often combined jumping races is accounted for in a great measure by the rule that no meeting should be permitted that did not give 1500 a day in prizes and that no fiat race should be of less value than 500 to the winner winnerThis This rule has been the deatli blow to country meetings of the old style and they have in a great measure been replaced by hunt steeplechase meet ¬ ings so that now we find that the arenas for steeple chasing and hurdle racing far outnumber those of Hat racing and that many of our finest agricultural and old sporting counties have not a single fiat race meeting held in them while in others there are only one or two of them
