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IN DEFENSE OF PAPYRUS British Writer Blames Jarvis for Not Using Clips on Papyrus . Recalls an Incident "Which Occurred in 1S98 to Verify His Statement Believes Horses Performance Remarkable. An echo of the international race is heard in the lament of the "Special Commissioner" in an article written for the London Sportsman. The absence of clips or calkins on Papyrus plates is offered as the reason for his defeat. The article by the noted British turf authority follows: When I read the account of the Zev-Papy-rus race and that Zev had clips or calkins on his plates and Papyrus had not, which fact is confirmed by Donoghues report, I know well that the result must have been a foregone conclusion, and my mind at once flew back to November, 1898, when I saw Merman being saddled for the Manchester November Handicap, for which he started favorite at 5 to 1. The mud and slush of the old course was as bad that day as I ever saw it, and I noticed that Merman, as in his earlier races, was without plates. This seemed to me to be a dreadful handicap under the conditions and I went so far as to say to Fred Webb : "Surely you are not going to run him barefoot in this mud?" "Oh, yes," replied he, "he always runs that way." A SIMILAR OCCURRENCE. Now, Merman liad never run except on hard or firm ground and I was sure that it was madness to expect him to do any good that day without plates, which would give him some sort of grip on the ground ; but it was no business of mine and I said no more. The result was exactly what I expected, for Merman dropped rapidly astern from the very start and finished tailed-off last, though a few weeks before he had won the Jockey Club Cup in a canter. He was a hardy beast and six years old at the time, but that nightmare struggle through the, Manchester mud took such a lot out of him that when, in the following week, they were injudicious enough to ask him to win a Hunters flat race on the Newmarket N. H. course, he was beaten seven lengths into third place ! Pew people remember this, but anyone with "Ruffs Guide" for 1S93 can verify it. Merman recovered from the strain in due course and won many great races in the two following years, but no one who saw the Merman fiasco at Manchester would have dreamed of letting Papyrus run without clips or calkins on Saturday last. Almost anyone must have in mind the parlous condition of horses in the streets of London on the occasion of a sudden frost before there has been time to get them rough-shod. Merman suffered from similar disabilities and so it is clear did Papyrus. Why, on a muddy, greasy track such as the Belmont Park one admittedly was, a good schoolboy with spiked shoes could beat Abrahams without them. The trouble is that the use of clips on racing plates was forbidden by the Jockey Club nearly twenty years ago as it was found that they are dangerous, should horses strike into one another and thus the younger generation of trainers is unfamiliar with their use ; but Sam Darling, some little time before the regulations referred to, utilized the idea to some purpose with Ard Patrick at Sandown, for in his book page 85 he writes: A TRAILERS STATEMENT. "I sent my assistant, Mr. Heard, with Ard Patrick to Sandown, together with something to lead him. I told him to let the horse go the full course the day before, as I was particularly anxious that he should get accustomed to the turn, as I felt pretty confident he might, like many other horses, have some fear of galloping into those boards at the turn. I had him turned up rather sharp on the outside heels and shod with new, larger-headed nails, which gave him a good grip. The course was frightfully hard and somewhat slippery. It is history that he came around the turn with an advantage and beat Sceptre by a neck." The conditions which led Sam Darling to take the above-named precautions were, of course, diametrically opposed to those which prevailed against Merman and Papyrus, and the top turn at Sandown has since then been banked up so as to render any such precautions unnecessary, but grass in dry weather is apt -to be very slippery and I have often looked with apprehension at the turn round the "clump" at Goodwood, where the course is very much at a wrong angle and ought to be altered. I remember seeing Golden Measure slip up there while trying to make the turn. However. I only want to make it plain here that on a greasy track a selling plater with clips on his plates could beat a champion without them and it is a thousand pities that Basil Jarvis did not allow himself to be persuaded by men like Joyner to adopt what would be to liim a novel experiment; but one can see that the change of weather conditions was very sudden and it it is riot in the English character to change ideas with equal rapidity. The going on these so-called "dirt tracks" is, if anything, worse under bad weather conditions than ever Manchester was. It is similar to that which most horsemen know in winter when there has been a partial thaw, still leaving a "bone in the ground" on which horses slip so badly. My point is that Papyrus must have made extraordinary efforts to run on Saturday last so very much better than Merman did at Manchester in 1S98, and all our notable authorities who are now saying this, that, or the other cause rendered his chance out of the question are, in my humble opinion, begging that question. It was the "plating" that did it and nothing else. That Donoghue should at any time of the race have felt confidence only shows what an abnormal effort Papyrus must have been making. I only-wish I had been there, for I think I could, by telling them the story of Merman at Manchester, have induced them to take the advice of Joyner and others. That Saturday was an evil day for Tracerys stock, seeing that his best three-year-old son, Papyrus, and daughter, Teresina, both suffered undeserved defeats. The defeat of Papyrus was due to conditions under which St. Simon would have failed to beat a good selling plater ; and as for Teresina I wrote twice before the race that I hoped she would not be started at Lingfield, after her tremendous and long-drawn-out fight for Ithe Cesarewitch. This, for a three-year-old filly, involved an effort which deserved relaxation for the rest of the season. No matter how well she looked or fed, the reaction was bound to be there, in the lack of nervous energy a spent force for the time being. The Cesarewitch is really the most exhausting race of the year, and never have I seen it fought out so desperately as on this recent occasion and that, too, by a three-year-old filly, -who but for being bumped, just after the Bushes, must needs have won. It seemed incredible that she should be asked to run again on the Saturday, but she was and with the natural result though it is right to say she was eased as soon as beaten at Ling-field. Some may say that Concertina, the winner at Lingfield, had also engaged in a close race at Newmarket when she was beaten a head by Tranquil for the Newmarket Oaks at a mile and six furlongs, the day before the Cesarewitch. This, however, is all nonsense, for the time would have been by no means a record, even for two miles and it simply meant that they went a good exercise gallop for more than half the distance and sprinted home, when Tranquil being, I am sure, slightly deficient in speed, only just beat Concertina, the effort not being prodigious in either -case. TERESINAS GRIM STRUGGLE. Concertina was probably all the better for such a gallop as that; but Teresinas grim struggle for the Cesarewitch was a vastly different affair and her vital energy could not possibly have been made good between Wednesday and Saturday or, in my humble opinion, until next year, however fresh and well she might look externally. However, she is a game, honest sort and was tenderly ridden at Lingfield, to finish out of a place for the first tiriie ; and I dare say no harm is done, but it seems hardly the way to handle her with a view to the Ascot Cup next year. I may perhaps display a trifle feeling over this Saturday because to anyone interested, as I am, in Tracery, It "was a nasty jar to find Papyrus and Teresina beaten on the same day and neither for an adequate reason ; but good old Tracery still rises superior to such troubles and remains head of the list of winning stallions, though. I by a narrow margin.
