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GREAT ENGLISH HORSES Trainer Gilpin Writes of Dis ¬ tinguished Derby Winners Barcaldlnr the Irish Horsr Which Rent Tris Tristan tan and Xever Knew Defeat in 12 Starts Archers Great Hide on Bend Or many great English horses He has trained many of these noted thoroughbreds himself In the following article taken from the Lon ¬ don Weelily Dispatch he tells of some of the best horses which have raced in England In the list of great horses discussed from time to time one finds the same names over and over again and when it comes to the ultimate decision as to which were the best the names of St Simon and Ormonde are almost invariably selected with a doubt still remaining as to which was the superior of the two Derby winners of course attract most attention and rightly so since from time immemorial the winners of that famous race have been heralded as champions and are champions with few exceptions exceptionsBut But I shall always think that in a bay colt foaled in 1S7S by Solon Ballyroc sub ¬ sequently named Barcaldine we saw one of the finest horses ever produced in the Brit ¬ ish Isles Before he ever ran he attracted my attention in Tom Connollys string at the Curragh as being a magnificent colt and I determined then and there with the courage lorn of youth to back him when he made his debut This he did in the Railway Stakes at the Curragh on September 9 1SSO when he defeated eleven others easily by three lengths Barcaldine ran three more races as a twoyearold and won every one of them with the greatest of ease easeBAIICALDIXKS BAIICALDIXKS STAKT STAKTXow Xow as a threeyearold Barcaldine led off by winning the Baldoyle Derby and won three more races all Queens Plates But they were races of little account since one was a walkover and in the other two he had only one opponent in each But they showed one thing plainly as those races were open to all horses in Ireland namely that there were none in the country that could oppose him with success successIn In 1SS2 as a fouryearold he ran not at all That was the year in which his unfor ¬ tunate owner got into trouble over a tele giam which he sent to Sir John Astley mak ¬ ing certain overtures which were immedi ¬ ately placed before the stewards of the lockey Club with the result that he was warned off the turf The owner was a bluff unim ¬ aginative man who was his own worst enemy but for which fact 1 feel sure he never would have done such a foolish thing as to make the proposal he did Many offers were made for the purchase of the horse but all were refused until he was finally sent to be sold by auction and was knocked down for JCOOO not a third of the sum that had been repeatedly refused to the late Mr liobcrt Iek Ieklrp lrp to this time Barcaldine had run only in Ireland where he had won all his eight races at two and three years old in a canter Now we were to see unmistakably what man ¬ ner of horse this was On May 4 1885 he first ran in his new owners colors in the Westminster Cup one mile and a quarter at Kempton Park where he met three good horses Lucerne Wallenstein and Tristan and won by a length much to the surprise of every one present Lucerne a good three yearold carrying 112 pounds was favorite Tristan under 14G pounds started at 5 to 2 Wallenstein under iiC pounds at 5 to 1 and BarcaJdinc the outsider of the party at 10 to 1 1TUISTAX TUISTAX A CHAMPION CHAMPIONNow Now Tristan was a champion and was the winner of the Epsom Gold Cup the Ascot Gold Vase the Jlardwicke Stakes at Ascot and the Champion Stakes Moreover in this year he was to win the Hardwieke Stakes again at Ascot a feat which he repeated in 18S4 and the Gold Cup at Ascot yet Bar ¬ caldine beat him easily and this when not nearly ready and consequently not expected to prove successful Wallenstein had won among other events the Liverpool Spring Cup and the Manchester Cup but in this Kempton race was only a bad third Barcal ¬ dine followed this up by winning the Epsom Stakes with 130 pounds in a canter by a length giving Witchcraft the second thirty nine pounds and the others twentyfive pounds and thirty pounds He then won the Orange Cup over three miles at Ascot easily by three lengths from FaughaBallagh to which he gave seven pounds yet Faugha Ballagh came out two days later and won the Alexandra Plate over the same distance His next and last race was in the Northum ¬ berland Plate over two miles at Newcastle when he carried 136 pounds this notwith ¬ standing that he had practically broken down and had done no work whatever for some eleven days previous to the race he won by two lengths from nine others othersThis This closed Barcaldines career on the turf he having run in twelve races altogether and ievcr known defeat His last race was of course a wonderful performance under the circumstances and could not have been achieved by any other than a great horse but to my mind it was his ready defeat of Tristan in his first race in England that proved In was worthy to rank with the best horses of all time I do not say he was the best St Simon in a trial match re ¬ ceiving twentythree pounds beat Tristan at Newmarket when the latter was six years old and did so in a canter over one and a half miles and repeated the dose in the Geld Cup at Ascot But it is possible though Tristan was still winning that he was not quite the horse he was when he was younger Still St Simon beat him practically pointless and is entitled to be considered better than liarcaldino in consequence consequencePretty Pretty well all the other great horses 1 have seen are to be found among winners of the Derby The first Derby I saw was won by Sefton belonging to the late Mr Stirling Crawford and 1 thought him a mod ¬ erate colt and was much more taken by a genuine animal that ran second to him the Count l agrangcs Insulaire This horse had run on the Sunday previous in Franco and came over to contest the Derby on the Wednesday and his essay in Paris seemed to me a great ordeal before running for such a race as the Derby and more than ttulliced to account for the length and a half by which he was beaten by Sefton SeftonI I did not see the race in the following year which was won by Sir Bcvys belong ¬ ing to Mr I eopold de Rothschild who then had the assumed name of Mr Acton This horse was probably of no better class than Sefton but in 1880 we saw two good horses in the Derby and one of the greatest races on record which was won by Bend Or rid ¬ den by Fred Archer who undoubtedly stole the race from Robert the Devil which was ridden by Kossitcr Bend Or came witli a lightning rush and won by the shortest of heads the victory exhibiting Archer at his best There is no doubt that he absolutely frightened Ros iter out of his life for the latter was so taken aback at the way Archer came that he was quite unable to do his mount justice justiceBend Bend Or was a beautiful quality horse and most taking to the eye in every way and he was afterward a great stallion whose blood is much sought after even at the present day On many subsequent occasions he proved how great a race horse he was Robert the Devil was not nearly so pre ¬ possessing to my mind but was a racing machine in every sense of the word and in my opinion was the better horse of the two and unquestionably so over long courses On the other hand Robert the Devil was prac ¬ tically a failure at the stud studIroquois Iroquois which won in 1SS1 was undoubt ¬ edly a good horse as Derby winners go and beat Peregrine which had won the Two Thousand Guineas not long before Iroquois went on to other victories numbering among them the St Leger and was one of the good American horses that were racing in ling land about that time
