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HORSES "DODGE" AT BELMONT PARK BY EXILE. The cause of so muny horses running oat, as it is incorrectly termed, in approaching the stands at Belmont Park is, as I see it, - fear. Horses do not run out at Belmont Park, they dodge, and this dodging is due to the sudden appearance of something, and that something is the Belmont Park grandstand. For instance, what but fear was the cause of Playcanys dedge last Friday? Moreover, although some do not dodge, they run as though imbued with a sense of impending disaster. Little do I know of the range or scope of a horses vision, but am led to believe that horses see things in a more magnified form than do beings human. Horses, when running at top speed at Belmont Park, suddenly find themselves confronted by a huge and fearsome object in the shape of a grandstand, which, as you know, is set farther back than any other in this country, consequently, they dodge. Running the wrong way has, in my opinion, nothing whatever to do with this tendecy to dodge, for in other countries where they run all ways no such tendency is to be observed. Horses run straight and true over the Rowley Mile and July Course at Newmarket, and the Lingfield Straight and New Mile at Ascot, in England. So they do on the Newmarket course at Australias Fleming-ton. Therefore, I cannot bring myself to believe that the straight, though wrong way, course of Belmont Park has anything at all to do with the dodging proclivities of horses which race thereon. The only logical solution of this much discussed habit is that a horse in action, when ncaring the stands at Belmont Park, sees something, and that something the magnified stands, which startles him and causes him to flinch.
