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The Day of the Half -Breed BY SALYATOK - Owing to the facilities afforded by the cable and modern news purveying activity I was reading the result of the Cambridgeshire before, I fancy, all the starters were fully cooled out from their exertions in the race. In many ways it was the most interesting one that has been run in England this year or anywhere. For myself, I was keener for the result than for anything else of the kind in many moons. I confess to a certain feeling of regret and disappointment at the defeat of Epinard. 1 wantd him to "come through" and thereby emblazon his name high upon the cntabula-turo of the equine temple of fame. For this would certainly have been the case had he teen home in front. That he was the hero of the race that his performance stamps him one of the most brilliant race horses seen in many, many years, if not ever goes, of course, without saying. The task set him Avas one which only a super horse could have accomplished, and Epinard, it appears, is just short of being one. We cannot rank him the equal of Foxhall, whose imperishable performance grows still brighter with the passage of the years. FOXHALLS VICTORY. Foxhall won under 12C pounds by a head from Lucy Glitters, 91 pounds ; Tristan third, a neck behind the filly, under 107 pounds all the trio being three-year-olds. Epinard, 12S pounds, failed by a neck to defeat Verdict, also a three-year-old, under 110 pounds ; Dumas, third, and still a three-year-old, with but 91 pounds up, a length away. It cannot be contended that the field behind the placed horses this year in any respect equaled that which followed Foxhall and his two contenders home. Verdict, except for this race, has no credentials for greatness. Dumas is far indeed from being a Tristan, while behind Tristan in the ruck were such cracks as the mighty Bend Or, Foulet, Petronel, Prestonpans, Peter, Corrie Koy, to mention only the most noted. The performance of Epinard was by no means up to that of the son of King Allonso ana Jamaica, for his two pounds excess weight is much more than offset by the defeat he sustained and the inferior character of the field as a whole. CONFIDENCE IN EPINARD. The Epinard party was undoubtedly overconfident. Their assertion that their colt was twenty-one pounds better than any other three-year-old in France, at the distance, may have been correct, but he was not twenty-one pounds better than any three-year-old in England. He just failed to give Verdict eighteen pounds actual weight. The English weight scale allots 119 pounds to three-year-olds at all distances from a mile to a mile and a half in the month of October, fillies receiving a three-pound allowance. On this basis, Epinard was giving Verdict or trying to give her fifteen pounds, or practically a stone, and he failed to do so by a neck. The fact, however, that Pharos, a close second in this years English Derby, was lengths up the track clearly indicates Epin-ards great superiority at even weights among the European three-year-olds of 1923, at this distance; for Parth, which ran third in the Derby, beat Filibert de Savoie, winner of this years Paris Grand Prix, together with a whole galaxy of other Gallic cracks, recently in the Prix de lArc dc Triomphe. "Whether Epinard can "go on" remains, of course, unestablished. Perhaps the Cambridgeshire distance of twenty yards beyond a mile and a furlong is as far as he cares to go. But over that much ground he is certainly a superb colt, and one almost worthy of the laudations that have been showered upon him. I do not wish to anticipate anything that Mr. Coussell may be so good as to favor the readers of DAILY PACING FORM with regarding Verdicts past history. But I must "rush into print" to point out a most interesting and, in the days of pur sang propaganda, extraordinary, fact. It is none other than that Verdict, the winner of this great race in some respects the most creditable performance by a three-year-old filly in English handicap history-is a mongrel of mongrels. She cannot be fcund in the English Stud Book, for she is not only "half-bred" but doubly so. And to aggravate this shocking condition, she carries, in addition, the "American stain," albeit one smuggled into the pages of Weatherby before the flat went forth forever cleansing it from such impurities and legitimatizing ar kings do their bastards the unfortunates thus afflicted. Verdict is by Shogun, now dead, the son of Santoi foaled in 1910 and one of the stars of the British turf a decade ago. when the fact of his "half-bredncss" caused much com- j ment and not a little bitterness and heart-J burning. Shogun a son of Santoi and Kcn-j dal Belle, a marc "outside the pale" went to the stud in 1915 and died in 1920. Owing to his being "half-bred," his stud service was ; limited and many of the mares mated with him were in the same boat with him, so far. as breeding went. One of the latter was Finale, the dam of Verdict. HAS WON BEFORE. I The Cambridgeshire is not the only stake won by ATerdict this year. She first broke into the headlines last spring and on that occasion I contributed some paragraphs upon her and her maternal ancestry to DAILY RACING FORM. It is not here necessary to reiterate what was then published except to trace her "American stain." The dam of Verdict, Finale, by Pericles, was from Parting Shot, by Petronel above-mentioned as one of the unplaced starters in Foxhalls Cambridgeshire of 1881 ; while the next dam was Wrangle, by Umpire, the son of Lecomte by Boston and Alice Carneal, the dam of Lexington, that was foaled in 1857 and taken to England as a yearling by Richard Ten Broeck and never re-crossed the Atlantic. In my article of last spring, upon Verdict, I gave the history of Umpire at seme length. He became a distinguished race horse in England, in the latter part of his career j carrying the colors of Lord Coventry, who is today still living, the "doyen" of British ! racing peers and the breeder and owner of j Verdict. Umpire, like Shogun, Verdicts ; sire, had little chance in the stud and was mated largely with half-bred and common mares, for which he stood at a fee of 5. But his merit was such that at this late date we find his blood close up in the pedigree of the winner of one of the most notable races of 1923. One more comment upon the Cambridgeshire. This race was formerly run over the "Old Cambridgeshire" course at Newmarket, which lacked a trifle of being seven and a half furlongs in length. But for many years past it was transferred to the more famous one "Across the Flat," and the distance lengthened to just 2,000 yards, or one mile and a furlong, plus twenty yards. The time made by Verdict was fast 1 :52. The English record for a mile and a furlong is but 1 :50, by Brown Prince, 3 years, 105 pounds, in 1917, a difference of but two seconds for the twenty yards extra run by Verdict. As Epinards time was virtually the same, under his 128 pounds, it marks a truly wonderful effort by him. FORCED TERRIFIC PACE. From the cabled accounts of the race it is not impossible that Epinards jockey compassed his colts defeat by forcing so terrific a pace from the jump-off the Frenchman took the lead immediately, set the pace all the way and was not got to until the last 100 yards. Had the early pace not been so severe, he might have had more left for the finish. Unfortunately we will probably, owing to the British contempt for "the watch," never have the fractional time for the complete race, so cannot judge just what the early pace may have been. It was evidently thought that Epinard could gallop his horses into submission by setting a terrific pace and have them die behind him, which proved an error of judgment. The difference between "then and now" is forcefully illustrated by reverting to the time of Foxhalls Cambridgeshire. It was difficult as belief may be 2 :15 ! In those days, before modern notions of jockeyship and pace-setting had come into vogue, there was seldom any pace whatever in the early part of a great race. It was this, doubtless, which served Foxhall well when at the end he came from behind and was up to beat Lucy Glitters by a neck. It is an interesting question for cogitation had Foxhalls Cambridgeshire been run "from end to end," would he or could he have won as he did?
