view raw text
FRENCH DISLIKE NEW ENGLISH RULE. The adoption by the Jockey .Club of England of the: new rule in relation to handicapping foreign-horses falls with more severity on French owners, than on those of any other nationality. The close proximity of the two countries lias made it convenient for owners to slip across the channel on racing foray that have now and then paid largely..-The French have done well In English racing and the English iu their turn have more than once carried away the opulent spoils of the Grand Prix de. Paris, to say nothing of other triumphs: But the new rule will practically cut French horses of high class out of further participation in the important. English handicaps. Why this is so Is thus set out by the Paris correspondent of Sporting Life: "The new rule passed by the English Jockey Club to .the effect that no horse can .lie handicapped until it lias run three times in the United Kingdom will effectively bar French horses, for .how can a French owner afford to send a good .horse over to England on three separate occasions in order to qualify? Where are the races in which he is to run? It is not to be expected that horses like Sea Sick, Grill Room. File dil Vent, Kinkajou and others will be entered in selling races, and they could not run in maiden plates. I have just obtained for a leading French trainer, who has a horse that he intended running in England, a copy of the current issue M the Racing Calendar, and we have been looking it through together. At Leicester this week the only race iu which he could have been entered was the Bradgate Park Plate of 100 sovereigns. Would Lord Durham send a valuable horse over to run for a 00 plate in France? At Liverpool and at Hurst Park there is absolutely no race open to him at all. Among the races to come we could Hud none for which lie was eligible at Hull. Ilaydock .Park, or York: in fact, we searched column after column of the Calendar without finding anything beyond a couple of plates of a hundred sovereigns for which this horse could have been entered. Supposing he was put in three races of this description, would the haudicappcrs be any wiser than they are at present? During the past three years the horse in question has run more than twenty times iu France, winning several races,T which have been duly reiHirtcd In Sporting Life and other journals; and his form must be quite as well known as that of animals running in Ireland, that are not exempted from handicaps under the new rule." It might be said that a great many English turfmen are of the opinion that the English turf could net along very well without the assistance of horses from France; the United States and other foreign countries. In their view of the matter the sport of racing should be carried on iii each couutry on its own resources and for its own people. So far as the United States is concerned it has never occurred to an English owner to send his stable over to race in tliis country and a good many of the folks over there wonder whv the Americans are not satisfied to confine their racing operations to their own country: To them it seems the money Americans are trving to win over there justly belongs to English owners who maintain the English turf. It accordingly follows that no inconsiderably portion of them would hold it no hardship if foreigners were excluded altogether from English racing.
