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LAMBASTING A HORRIBLE SUGGESTION I notice a strange letter In yesterdays Issue, signed W. N.. and advocating, in effect, the removal of the Derby from Epsom. The Idea of sue a tiling would be enough to lead to public rioting, with Ijoudoii posing as another Londonderry, hut the idea is so obviously beyond the possibility of materializing that it need not be further mentioned. It Is worth nothing, however, that the writer of tills peculiar letter thinks "we have only see three genuine Derby winners at Epsom in the past sixteen years, these being Cicero, Suustar and Lem-berg." It is all very well to tall: of "genuine Derby winners" without defining what yon mean, hut in what conceivable sense were Spearmint and Orby not "genuine Derby winners"? The former of these was certainly as ..good a Derby winner "genuine" or not as we have seen hi this century. In the last century the best horses have won the Derby. I need only mention n few, such as The Flying Dutchman, Voltigeur, Blair Atliol, Gladiator, Hermit, Favonius. Creniorne, Oalopin, Silvio, Persimmon, Galtee More, Ard Patrick, Ormonde, Bend Or, Doncaster, Donovan, St. Gatien, Melton. Isinglass, Ladas, Rock Sand, Diamond Jubilee I am writing just as the names occur to me. Did the Epsom race course prevent these from winning? Certainly, just before the war there was a strange sequence of moderate winners, but lioth Minora and Tagalie had shown classic form earlier at Newmarket, and it was no fault of the course that beat Tracery in the first race that he had ever run. Signorinettas opponents were simply not so fit as she was, and Llnngwm was not so well, ridden. Here, again, the course was not to blame;. As to Anmer, the "contretemps" might have happened at Newmarket or anywhere granted that a mad suffragetter was present and desired to knock liini over. A similar incident did, in fact, occur at Ascot, when Tracery was the victim. Finally, Ablets Trace was not really "knocked over" at Epsom, hut ran till he dropped in his tracks and lay as if dead. There is every reason why no trouble or expense should be spared in making the Epsom race course as good as possible and in saving it from being trampled on by the ceaseless crowds of spectators, but the suggestion that Epsom Downs and the Derby should be divorced is too monstrous to contemplate for the scintilla of a moment. "Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!" So says Falstaff somewhere and the same might be said of this wild scheme for banishing the Epsom Derby. We should have to be on the verge, of bolshevism before any such iconoclastic proposal could appeal to the British public. "The Special Commissioner" in London Sportsman.
