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TEMPERAMENT IN THOROUGHBREDS Sensible View of the Part Played in Racing by Obscure Ailments of the Horse In an interesting treatise of the temperament in race horses Hotspur in the London Daily Tela graph suys it is usually the people who know least about horses nril horse character who are ii st suspicions of turf morality Such igiioranco would bo fjrwirly lessened if more attention was paid to the mental and physical machinery of the thoroughbred and a fairer allowance made for the way it may sometimes operate to the confusion of human calculations calculationsIt It issw easy he adds to malign a trainer or Jockry and hold them morally responsible for a horses ninniug which cannot possibly be ex ¬ plained by what is recorded in races past pastSome Some readers I suppose will go on believing that results which were not foreshadowed by form trials and bottitig must have been brought about by dark machinations on the part of the trainers in particular to profit while the general public lost And they will be impatient of any argument I can advance that such results were due to natural causes causesI I prefer to think there are some who like myself agree that racing today is probably healthi ¬ er and straighter than it ever was and that ownors trainers and jockeys generally are abso ¬ lutely undeserving of the black thoughts which are so often framed into words wordsI I maintain that the number of alleged rogues in training is far fewer than is popularly sup pasd Sufficient importance may not lie at ¬ tached to the paralysing effect of actual raring on the highly strung temperament of some horses fear born of memory of bumps and scrimmages at tlie post and through a race and punishing finishes demanding more tliUH nature could give failure to understand a horses capacity and consequent racing of It out of its proper class and short or beyond its proper distance and again the presence of some physical suffering which is unsuspected but which nuy still exist under the nervous strain of the race proper properThe The great value of racing is revealed by the survival of the fittest aiul strongest and the hr edcr Is enlightened Thus does racing most thoroughly justify itself but to say that every horse whlclr appears incapable of reproducing pri ¬ vate and public form must lc a rogue because he will not battle Is wrong There are far fewer rogues among race horses than we think Other causes are contributory but because they are not apparent the odium of roguery is at times most unfairly cast on owner trainer and jockey jockeyTemptrament Temptrament in race horses was never so potent a factor as in these ilajv It is in the main the outcome of the steady evolution of the thor ¬ oughbred and especially is it due to the immensely different way races are run now compared with prpstarting gate and proSloan days daysThey They race under far higher pressure now than when leisurely starts took place under the flag system and when jockeys rode with longer leath ¬ ers That is why form then vyas more consistent and why winners now are not so easy for the shrewdest and best informed to find The devel ¬ opment if tenipcruinUiit has been sttady and un ¬ interrupted until today it plays a p r which few properly appreciate The old school of owners and trainers must know it
