Racehorses in Australia

by Unknown

Let me take another example. Wallace Isinglass was a fine upstanding three-year-old with plenty of bone and plenty of muscle, and had a proper Derby-Wallace-Carbine inherited heart. He ran in the Rosehill Guineas a few weeks before the Derby of 1916, the distance being increased from seven furlongs to a mile and a furlong, and he was made an odds-on favourite. By some means he got into a bad position, and when he entered the straight he seemed to have no chance of beating Cetigne. Then he made a wonderful effort; it was the effort of a horse with a stout heart, and he put every ounce of reserve he had into the final run, and inch by inch he gained on the brilliant, honest Cetigne, and won by a nose! Never was a braver effort ever seen on a racecourse, and I felt that he had to thank his Wallace heart—not to mention what his dam (Glass Queen) may have added—for his victory.

This victory made him an odds-on favourite for the Derby, and Bobby Lewis, thinking that he had a real Wallace stayer to handle, determined to “make the running” and knock Cetigne out; but he failed for two reasons. In the first place, he hurried his mount most unwisely for the first half-mile, forgetting what Fred Archer had laid down as a rule, that if you hurry a stayer enough for the first half-mile you will kill him dead; and, in the second place, Bobby not being a pathologist did not know anything about dilated hearts, so he evidently took it for granted that his mount’s heart was of the true Wallace brand. But he found to his dismay that he had made so much use of his horse that he died in his hands in the last fifty yards and Cetigne won. The effort certainly did not do Cetigne’s non-staying heart any good, for he never ran a decent race over a distance afterwards, though he lived to win the most dramatic race ever seen at Randwick when he won the Craven Plate in record time in 1918. Now, though Cetigne had a non-staying heart—Grafton being no sire of stayers—yet he must have had a very sound heart to win a Newmarket six furlongs with 9 stone in 1.13½, a Villiers mile in 1.38¼ with 9.4 in the saddle, and lower Woorak’s Craven Plate record of 2.5¼ to 2.4½; and yet he could not run a mile and a half with success in good company.

Let me say that a heart that is dilated may recover if the animal is properly rested. Wallace Isinglass being bred to have a staying heart on his sire’s side as well as on his dam’s side, was judiciously nursed by his rich owner, and, as a result, as a four-year-old and a five-year-old he did well over a distance, and lived to defeat Desert Gold at two miles in Melbourne, and to run Lanius and Westcourt to a neck over the Cumberland Stakes two miles.

Let us see if we can learn anything of use from the above remarks. The chief lesson that is to be learnt is: That you can’t make a stayer out of a horse that has not inherited a staying heart, train him as you will. The old ideal that if you wanted a horse to run two miles you had to train him over that distance was absurd. You must, of course, get the animal’s muscles in a fit condition, and that can be done by slow, long work, and by running him at a fast pace from time to time over a mile or so; but you can’t make his heart carry him two miles at the requisite pace if he does not inherit the proper kind of heart, no matter how you train him! It is quite true that a horse in some cases stays better the older he gets, because his heart improves; still the fact remains that the true stayer is born, not made.

After all in staying it is the pace that tells; in other words, a great stayer must have the power to run at a great pace all the way and to have something out of the common to finish with; and unless the horse has an inherited staying heart it is quite impossible for him to finish well. When we think of the run that Poitrel with 9.9 on his back made when Kennaquhair won the Sydney Cup in 3.22¾; when we think of the run he made in the Spring Stakes when he beat Desert Gold in 2.31 one year, and Gloaming in the same race the following year; when we think how he finished in his Melbourne Cup, carrying ten stone, then we realise what a true staying heart is capable of doing when called upon.

It has often been observed that great stayers are wont to hang behind in the early stages of a long-distance race. No one, for instance, ever saw anything of old Tartan until the distance was reached, then he would come along like a bolt from the blue and smother his opponents, as he did with 9.6 in the Australian Cup. This is quite characteristic of the stayer. If you hurry him too much in the early stages of a long race you will defeat him. The reason is that his heart must not be asked to do too much too quickly. You must let him gradually get his heart beating in a slow, methodical way, and then all goes well, and when the time comes everything is as it should be; his lungs being unimpeded in their work co-operate with the heart. If, however, you hurry the stayer too much in the first part of the race the circulation becomes upset—that is, the circulation in the lungs causes an engorgement that interferes with the breathing of the horse, and with the smooth working of his heart.

Some stayers have a particular kind of heart which enables them to sprint, and, at the same time, it allows them to begin quickly in a distance race, to get into a good position early, and to keep their places. Poseidon was such a horse. He was a perfect stayer, could sprint like a pure sprinter, and was so clever in a big field that he could take up any position he liked in any race no matter the distance. Mooltan, another horse with a Positano heart, could run a mile (second in the Epsom), win a Metropolitan, and run second in a Melbourne Cup. No better example of this type of horse could be found now than Sasanoff—a perfect sprinter and a perfect stayer. Wakeful was another.

Again, there are some horses who can run in front of the field for a distance and keep up the pace. They, in fact, run a waiting race in front. These horses, however, are often not true stayers. Desert Gold, Biplane and Gloaming could each do this for a mile and a half; for two miles Prince Bardolph did it in the Sydney Cup with success, and tried to do the same thing in the Australian Cup, but when he had gone two miles and a furlong a horse with a Carbine heart—Defence—caught and beat him easily. Posinatus won his Melbourne Cup in this way from start to finish, and I fancy Newhaven did the same thing, while Harvest King, with a Comedy King staying heart, won the last Australian Cup and led throughout.

Now a word on Endurance: this is not the same thing as staying. The difference between the two is a matter of pace. For instance, some horses in East India can sprint quite well for three furlongs, but cannot go fast for any distance, yet they are capable of going 80 miles in a cart from sunrise to sunset. This brings home to us that staying power—that is, the ability to go two miles at a very rapid pace—requires a different type of heart to the endurance heart. We may admit that this latter must be a good type of heart, but it is a different type to the staying heart. The endurance heart is well illustrated when we come to deal with jumping horses. We all know of horses that could only get a mile on the flat—say, for instance, Lord Nagar, who won the Villiers—yet when these horses become hurdlers we see them putting up records and winning over two miles in quite brilliant fashion. The explanation is that it is only a matter of pace. A cab horse can run two miles, but his pace is nothing. A hurdler can run two miles, but the time he takes would leave him a furlong or two behind in a weight-for-age race. Therefore when we say a horse can stay, we imply the possession of a heart that can stand the enormous strain of running two miles, or more, in time that will not much exceed three minutes twenty-six seconds, carrying a good weight.

And now that I have mentioned weight, let us ask: What effect has weight on a horse in regard to staying?