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ARGENTI NA RACES NOT SPORT Palermo Maintained Merely for Betting and Little True Sportsmanship Shown. I have been to a good many meetings at the Palermo course of Buenos Aires in the Argentine Republic. The racing is intertsing at first, but It does not take you long to find that the element of sport is almost entirely lacking. The monotony of seeing the same horses run twice every week on the same course would become intolerable If one did not regard them as nothing more important. Individually, than the petits chevaux. In this country it would be almost impossible to get horses to face such an ordeal, and I have Watched carefully at Palermo to see signs of some at least of the runners turning it up, but they all seemed like galley slaves, with no heart in them to rebel. This is the more remarkable, because practically all of them are trained on or near the same ground and with little or no variety of gallops. . They line up and start in a matter-of-fact, listless fashion, and not in the paddock or anywhere else that I have seen do they display the fire and vitality which we are accustomed to see in our horses when they are fit and well. It is the same in their stables, where they are as quiet as sheep, and it has always seemed to me that the climate is the true cause of these conditions. It is incredible that Diamond Jubilee, had he remained in England, would ever have become the placid, tractable beast which he certainly was after a brief sojurn in South America. The horses bred there grow big, and apparently strong, but the soul of the British thoroughbred seems to have gone out of them and its fire fled. By no stretch of imagination can it be regarded as an exhilarating pastime to see these spiritless animals opposing one another week by week always on the same course; but the gambling public cares for none of these things any more than Gallio did when the Jews beat Sosthenes in his presence. All that the gambling public of "B. A." cares for is to gamble, I do not dispute that there- have been good horses bred in the Argentine, but it would need a Ravensbury to stand frequent racing under such trying conditions. That the. Jockey Club and the municipality of Buenos Aires draw large sums from the totalizator percentage goes without the saying, but the racing is certainly not of a short to. benefit the breed of horses or in any way promote the. cause of sport. W. Allison in London Sportsman.
