Successful Steeplechase Sires.
A steeplechasing season somewhat lacking in interesting features has just about concluded at the time of writing. After the Liverpool Grand National the average racegoer says farewell to National Hunt racing with no poignant feelings of regret; but the season is by no means ended at that point for owners and others immediately concerned in steeplechase horses. The multitudinous Easter gatherings keep them tolerably busy, and jumpers which have gone the dreary round of the small winter meetings are brought out again in April and May in the hope of adding another race or two to the winning record. For the better-class horses there is the Manchester Meeting, with a stake second only in importance to the Grand National, while in Ireland steeplechasing cannot be counted as finished until the Punchestown Races have been run.
This season there was a fairly satisfactory influx of good-class flat-racers to the National Hunt arena, among them being Sandboy, Rydal Head, Amersham, Prince Royal, Vril, Lancashire, Therapia, and Crepuscule. In the long run, the action of the National Hunt Committee rather more than a year ago in raising the value of stakes at meetings claiming several dates on the fixture list, is bound to assist the progress of winter racing. Those who have read previous articles in these pages by the present writer will remember that he has invariably joined sides with those who advocate that no event under National Hunt Rules—with the exception of races at the genuine hunt meetings, claiming only a single day each season—should be of smaller value than £100. The suggestion has invariably encountered a great deal of opposition, the chief objection usually being that only the best enclosure meetings could afford to frame their programmes on these lines, and, consequently, sundry country gatherings that provide sport for many people would be obliged, figuratively speaking, to put up their shutters owing to lack of funds.
In reply to this argument, one can only urge that the steeplechase fixture list is greatly overcrowded, and if some of the less substantial meetings did go to the wall, so much the better for sport. This, I must grant, is a ruthless line of reasoning, but I hold that, if steeplechasing is to prosper, it is necessary to maintain the public interest, and that can never be done by a lot of twopenny-halfpenny meetings, whose importance—such as it is—is purely local. More quality, and fewer leather-flapping meetings, should be the object of all interested in the future of steeplechasing. It is only reasonable to assume that the more races there were worth running for, the more would high-class horses be put to jumping. New owners would take up winter racing with the knowledge that there were plenty of good stakes to be won, and the public would be attracted, in far greater numbers than at present, to see an improved type of steeplechaser and hurdle-racer. The National Hunt Committee have gone some way towards bringing about this improvement by the introduction of the rule regulating the amount of stake-money at certain meetings, and I hope for further legislation in the same direction within the next few years.
RED PRINCE II.
Photo by W. A. Rouch and Co.]
The day may dawn, as I have suggested before, when breeders of blood-stock may consider it worth their while to breed specially for National Hunt racing, but at present there is not a great deal of encouragement to do so. It is interesting, nevertheless, to see how the best steeplechase winners each season are bred, and breeders of hunter stock can always learn something from a study of the pedigrees of prominent performers under National Hunt Rules. They know by this time, for example, that if you want to breed a jumper you are tolerably safe in using a suitable stallion with plenty of Newminster blood in his veins. They know, too, that the descendants of Birdcatcher, particularly through the Stockwell and Sterling channels, can get valuable steeplechasing stock; while the Blacklock blood, so powerful nowadays on the flat, has also claimed its share of cross-country successes, though we have yet to see a stallion of the Galopin tribe sire a Grand National winner. In this connection, it is worthy of note, the Birdcatcher line has claimed a Grand National winner four times during the last decade, namely, Manifesto (twice), Drogheda, and Ambush II., while the Touchstone line has had only two successes, Drumcree and Ascetic’s Silver. But while the Ascetics continue to show such remarkable form in the steeplechases calling for the best qualities of stamina and courage, and the Hacklers keep on winning many races every season, the Newminster line or Touchstone must still be regarded as the best for producing jumping stock.
On May 11th I drew out a list of the first twenty-four winning steeplechase stallions as they stood at that date, the lead being taken by Ascetic and Hackler, and this is how they came out in the male line:—
Touchstone.—Hackler, Ascetic, Marciòn, Bushey Park, Royal Meath, and Speed (through Newminster); Noble Chieftain (through Scottish Chief); and Victor Wild (through Marsyas); total, 8.