view raw text
CONSIDERING ENGLANDS NEXT DERBY An Expert Opinion that Tracerys Son Tho Panther Will Prove the Winner There is good reason to hope that the Derby of I91JI will l e run at Kpsom Whatever temporary difficulties of transiHirt it might entail that much at any rate is din to the British public and to the soldiers and sailors who by that time would lx able to see the great nice in such numbers It is a pity that so far as can be judged at present our coming threeyearolds will not rank above average standard and certainly nowhere near the mark attained to by those of the present year How good the threeyearolds of 1918 are has been proved tt demonstration in the autumn handicaps for it is clear that Gainsborough could have Avon the Cesa re witch with 12l iHjunds and My Dear could have won the Cambridgeshire under the same burden Anil yet I see a Doubting Thomas questioning whether Gainsborough is a great horse What can be greater than to bo out by himself the best of a year in which the secondrate threeyearolds are good enough to fill first three places for the Cesarewitcli two of them with 113 pounds and IDS pounds re ¬ spectively Xo depend on it this has been a great year indeed for threeyearolds The trouble is that the same thing cannot be said of their successors at any rate so far as racing ha hitherto disclosed them I have no sort of doubt that The Panther is a highclass colt indeed but here we have to judge rather by intuition than by what be has ac ¬ tually done in public On the book Galloper Light has at least equal claims but I never thought of him in the same category even when he finished in front of the sou of Tracery the first time they met The prospects seem to bo that of a season in which one god colt dominates the situation and all the rest are moderate Such a season was Gladiateurs and another of the sort was Flying Foxs Gladiatenrs was the most peculiar of all for lie came from France and tinre was not a single Englishbred colt that year up to the most moderate Derby standard Vet in the absence of the great French ¬ man something would have won presumably Christ ¬ mas Carol which would thus have attained to classic repute though no better than a good plater platerGELDINGS GELDINGS AND THE DERBY DERBYIt It is to save us from misunderstandings of this sort that I have always maintained the Jockey Club was wrong when it barred geldings from running in the classic races These races are nut ends in themselves but only means by way of test to ends of vastly greater importance viz the improvement of our breed of horses Here comes in the supreme value of the Derby as dis ¬ tinguished from all other races of the same name for it is open to this world of breeders anil tin winner is or should be a real champion But if there be a gelding that can beat him and thus dis ¬ illusionize his admirers the opportunity for doing so ought not to be refused Otherwise the Derby winner gains a false reputation and goes to tho stud at a higher fee than he deserves I suppose Stefan the Great may train on into a good colt next year but his forelegs are not altogether prom ¬ ising We seem however to be at the beginning of a Herod epoch and it may be that Roi Herode and The Tetrarch are only just on the upward curve of their fortunes He that as it may The Panther to my mind will beat all his contemporaries when ¬ ever and wherever they meet meetAmong Among the fillies it serins to me that Bayuda is likely to prove the best but her form is not by any means wonderful Still Alec Taylor never gives his best twoyearolds much to do and it may well be that the daughter of Itayardo will improve out of all recognition as a threeyearold The Special Commissioner iti London SporUuiun
