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ANOTHER THOROUGHBRED WHOS WHO WHOThe The Greatest of the Great Once More Selected With the Usual Result By SALVATOBE Every once in a while somebody comes forward with a desire to tell the world pre ¬ cisely which have been Americas very greatest whySometimes thoroughbreds and why Sometimes it is just a personal affair a oneman show in which the particular steeds that a particular and sometimes not too particular selector has seen fit to parade before the public as the best ever everAt At other times the impresario producing the spectacle does not rely upon his own individual opinions With a broader desire to survey the facts he gathers the selections of a group of turfmen who are according to his lights competent to name names or at least men whose ideas on the subject if not final are interesting Then he sum ¬ marizes their findings and announces the result resultWhereupon Whereupon it is as a rule received In the accustomed way That is to say it is well picked to pieces by the critical nonjurors and what they leave of it is seldom worth mention only fragments littering the floor Whereupon the world goes roaring on its way and things remain precisely as before Nevertheless it is a pleasant pastime and gives an opportunity for praising the heroes of the past or dispraising them as the case may be and for starting an argument And as devotees of the turf for the most part prefer an argument to anything else except a winning ticket these periodical efforts to assess turf greatness always hold some interest to anyone who really loves a great racer racerVery Very recently still another anthology of the greatest of the great has been presented to us It was anthologized by a metropolitan 3 newspaper scribe who in doing his stuff f followed the precedent of obtaining the views of various prominent turfmen rand from them digesting the table of horses which as a group they rate highest highestOf Of course to begin with one may question the fitness of divers and sundry of the se ¬ j lectors to sit in judgment upon such a subject Just because a man has attained prominence upon the turf by no means t qualifies him to decide upon such weighty t matters As many of these gentlemen are often known to be unable to pick a single winner on a days current program how oh j how are they to pose as able to discriminate so delicately among the turf titans of the past many of which they really know no more about than the next man if as much and to tell just which ones to put in and L which to leave out in a list of the twenty f best since Longfellow Let echo answer However the scribe aforesaid went about t among the men who also as aforesaid seemed to him worth getting together in i J mass formation to decide the momentous 3 question and from their revelations he pre ¬ pared his little list Here it is its members being listed in the order in which they were placed by the selectors t tHorse Horse and year foaled Starts Wins Won 1 Man o War 1917 21 20 249465 2 Sysonby 1902 15 14 184438 3 Colin 1905 15 15 180912 4 Hanover 1884 50 32 118872 5 Exterminator 1915 100 50 252596 6 Hindoo 1878 35 30 71875 7 Salvatpr 1886 19 16 113710 8 Domino 1891 25 19 193550 9 Commando 1898 9 7 58196 10 Artful 1902 8 6 81125 11 Equipoise 1928 43 26 322970 12 Luke Blackburn 1877 39 25 49460 13 Firenze 1884 82 48 112586 14 Miss Woodford 1880 48 37 118270 15 Kingston 1884 138 89 138917 138917ltj ltj Ben Brush 1893 40 25 65217 17 Imp 1894 171 62 70119 18 Regret 1912 11 9 35093 19 Twenty Grand 1928 20 13 260840 20 Broomstick 1901 39 14 74570 74570One One wellknown critic who has already alreadyspoken spoken his piece about the above list would in his own words not only discard Broom ¬ stick but make a clean sweep and discard Domino Commando Ben Brush Regret and I possibly Imp Thus you will see here is one censor alone who considers that no less than six out of the twenty dont belong belongI I wot that if the list were to be sub ¬ mitted to the tender mercies of other eminent hands when they were done with it it would look like a target upon which a bunch of aspirants for the rifle champion ¬ ship had been exercising their skill Quite so soAs As for my own opinion I dont think it counts for much But T feel constrained to remark that like the authority quoted I would also sweep out of it at least as many horses as would he if not more substituting for them others now conspicuous by their absence absenceTo To me a list of the twenty best horses from the day of Luke Blackburn the senior of the twenty to the present that includes for instance neither Henry of Navarre Mor ellb Roamer Troubadour Purchase Cru ¬ sader JReigh Count nor Blue Larkspur nary one of em and while including various mares omits Yo Tambien Thora and Wanda is a good deal of a joke Then again just observe the ranking ac corded the twenty In respect to more than one of them it is still more of a jest than the inclusions or exclusions just referred to However there it is in all its glory If neither perfect nor indeed almost perfect in its personnel it exhibits an interesting cast of characters all of which we may truthfully term great race horses if not the twenty greatest
