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MEMORABLE ASCOT CUP RACE RECALLED. The recently-announced death, in France, of the stallion Bachelors Button, recalls memories of an Ascot Gold Cup contest which will never be forgotten by those who were privileged to witness it. Contemporary with that great mare Pretty Polly, I verily believe that the son of Winkfield and Milady was never forgiven by the general public for Itis defeat at Ascot of the late Major Eustace Lod-ers idolized filly; but it-would be, of course, stupid to suggest that on this account lie was not so strongly patronized at the stud as would otherwise have been the case. It was in 1000, when Pretty Polly was five years old, and Bachelors Button, being two years her senior, ranked as an aged animal, that the only defeat, on English soil, of the daughter of Gallinule and Admiration occurred. Earlier in the same year she had accounted for the March Stakes and Epsom Coronation Cup. while Bachelors Button, following on a narrow defeat by Achilles in the Burwell Plate at the Second Spring meeting at headquarters, had easily accounted for the Manchester Cup. under top weight. It was not in the least surprising, however, that while odds of 11 to 4 were demanded about Pretty Pollys chances for the Ascot Cup, 7 to 1 could be procured about either Bachelors Button or Cicero. Racing people are invariably superstitious, and so Ave heard, after she had been so unaccountably defeated, that many visitors to Ascot on that fateful day had observed on the part of the mare a disinclination to leave the paddock for the race course a whim she had never displayed before as though she was possessed of some presentiment of the disaster to come. However that may be. it is beyond question that the downfall of few public favorites was so genuinely and sincerely regretted as that of Pretty Polly, whom everyone had come to regard as invinicible. i It is. however, with "Pollys" conqueror on that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon that I am now especially concerned. Mr. Sol Joels horse stood for j a few seasons in England, during which period he sired a few useful animals, though I cannot recall anything better than the Coronation Cup winner, , Blue Stone, and Candytuft amongst his representatives. Subsequently sold to the Due Decazes, Bachelors Button had been in France for some four or five years prior to his death, but owing to the war very few of his produce have had any chance of displaying their ability on the race course. His French stock, all the same, are declared by good judges to be very promising indeed, and that being the case, the horses death at the comparatively early age of seventeen, is distinctly to be regretted. "Augur," in London Sporting Life.
