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This Side Up: Fostering a Sense of Legacy

Ours is the most nostalgic of sports, sustained by trusted cycles. And if the calendar pauses somewhat, between the end of the Triple Crown and the renewal of beloved summer rituals at Saratoga and Del Mar, that won't preclude an evocative resonance in some of the things we can enjoy Saturday.

True, the idea that Letruska (Super Saver) is any kind of throwback, just because she is managing a second start in three weeks, is a measure of how effete the modern Thoroughbred has become. I've drawn attention previously to Jim Bolger's campaigning of Poetic Flare (Ire) (Dawn Approach {Ire}), who last month contested three Classics in 22 days, so hopefully everybody registered his career-best display at Royal Ascot the other day. Note, too, that this colt is by a stallion discarded by the commercial market, now standing privately on Bolger's own farm.

Be that as it may, the ferrous qualities perceived in the Mexican mare will be doing no harm to a picaresque narrative that has already exalted her from El Hipodromo de las Americas to early mutterings about Horse of the Year. But if Letruska is perhaps not quite as old-fashioned as would appear, then the same could be said of another highlight of closing day at Churchill.

The GII Stephen Foster S. is a race that somehow feels more venerable than its history warrants. It was only inaugurated in 1982, and a couple of years ago lapsed from the Grade I status secured by some who contributed to its precocious stature. In 1998, for instance, Awesome Again and Silver Charm rehearsed to within half a step their GI Breeders' Cup Classic exacta that November. The following year, Victory Gallop stopped the clock at 1:47.28–a mark that still looms over Maxfield (Street Sense) and friends today. Saint Liam, Curlin and Gun Runner are among the other names decorating the roll of honor. But what really gives the Stephen Foster that sepia tint is, well, Stephen Foster.

I find it very gratifying that our community honors a man who notoriously died at 37, with 38 cents in his wallet, adrift in the flophouses of the New York theatre district. Though he celebrated our sport directly in Camptown Races, we view his principal bequest as My Old Kentucky Home.

Singing Foster's anthem is a Derby Day highlight | Coady

Recently, of course, the undertones of our Derby Day anthem have been subjected to fresh examination. That's an exercise pretty typical of our times and, for some, duly began with an aggressive presumption that the song sought to place a romantic gloss on the era of slavery. But while the same misapprehension has doubtless been shared by many under the Twin Spires over the past century, Foster's original lyrics and intentions have instead been newly saluted for a compassion, uncommon at the time, for the sufferings of those “sold down the river”.

In many respects of his shadowed life, no doubt, Foster failed to transcend the norms of the epoch in which his genius was forged. But it feels right that we can still honor the human spirit that still flickers, all these years later, in a soul darkened by drink and despair. For once, perhaps, this controversial process has actually served its purpose: not “cancellation”, but a better understanding of the pathos and dignity that unites Foster's own story with that of his cherished lament.

Food for thought, here, for any horseman who proudly anticipates the respect of posterity. For how will history judge those who are pushing the slack boundaries of their calling today? No less than when we look back at Foster, it will be the context of our time that allows proper judgement, for better or worse, of what truly abides in our individual natures.

Will trainers be judged simply by the big races they have won? Or will it be additionally asked why Trainers A, B and C signed up to publication of their veterinary records, signed up to WHOA, and maintained a clean violation history; and why Trainers D, E and F conspicuously did not? Because make no mistake, if our sport has survived at all, then it will only be because those questions have become much more important than appears to be the case right now. The fact is that if you're one of those trainers who can look yourself in the mirror every morning, then you're also meeting with a candid eye the inquiring gaze of future Turf historians.

The river that unites Louisville and Foster's home state of Pennsylvania was also the medium through which his work became endowed with flavors of the antebellum South, of which his personal experience was actually extremely limited. But it's a son of New Orleans I'd like to follow in the reverse direction Saturday. Because the man who saddled Tom's d'Etat (Smart Strike) to win the Stephen Foster last year, Al Stall, Jr., saddles a most interesting candidate for a race with a far longer history in the GIII Ohio Derby.

Masqueparade | Coady

Masqueparade (Upstart) certainly has the best of antecedents, bred by Brereton C. Jones and his exemplary team at Airdrie, and trained by a gentleman whose record of achievement–highlighted by another Stephen Foster winner in Blame–presents so cleanly. Stall brought the horse along steadily through the Fair Grounds winter, taking four attempts to break his maiden, but that dozen-length romp on the Derby undercard looked a real coming of age. Masqueparade was awarded a 97 Beyer for that, breathing down the neck of Medina Spirit (Protonico)'s 102 in the main event, and I hope that he can now break into the elite of a crop with much to play for in the second half of the season.

Raised the way he was, Stall will be well aware that 1924 Kentucky Derby winner Black Gold, whose remains are interred in the Fair Grounds infield, won this race on his first start after Churchill. Sadly, one of the great fairytales of the American Thoroughbred would reach an unworthy conclusion when Black Gold, having proved infertile, was restored to competition only to suffer a grotesque breakdown.

Though his one and only foal was killed by lightning, Black Gold survives in the fabric of our sporting heritage. Back at Churchill, indeed, those who contest the GIII Bashford Manor S.–35 minutes after the Ohio Derby–will also find his name in its annals.

This communal sense of legacy, however, only serves its purpose so long as it remains dynamic and not merely ceremonial. We see that in an evolving relationship with the sentimental anthem we have long harnessed to our greatest occasion. Because we don't want a homesickness for a place that never existed; nor nostalgia for a past that didn't, either. Respecting and understanding the past also instructs us about the present, and our duty to the future.

A due sense of heritage reproves us that we are only ever custodians of the Thoroughbred. As breeders, certainly, we should always try to operate in a way that will earn the gratitude of our successors. And trainers, similarly, should remember that their deeds of today will not be judged tomorrow simply by their trophies. None of us wants to end up in the gutter, with 38 cents to our name. But wherever we end up, posterity will always know whether or not we could still see the stars.

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This Side Up: When the Going Gets Tough…

And so the dust settles on a Triple Crown in which not a single horse showed up for all three legs, with the one awaiting promotion as “winner” of the GI Kentucky Derby instead resurfacing this weekend in a non-graded stakes at Monmouth.

When they withdrew him from the Classic fray, the Mandaloun (Into Mischief) team obviously had no idea that he might abruptly find himself elevated onto the Derby roll of honor, albeit burdened with an asterisk. But they certainly captured the spirit of the age, one we deplored last week in celebrating the Classics as a historically reliable signpost to the genetic assets we should want to recycle.

To that extent, how we campaign horses actually involves making decisions on the same continuum–namely, the extent to which we're putting it all out there in a way that future generations can trust–as the more notorious ones made over the range of “therapies” today available from science.

From the outside, we can only judge what's happening inside a barn from the animal presented to the public. All of us with a stake in the breed, then, have a duty to try and identify (and, wherever possible, to invest in) those who are palpably working in its interests. So, for instance, owners who choose a barn with an extraordinary strike-rate need to ask themselves what kind of practices they might be supporting in the cause of self-interest.

Now there are certainly trainers who can settle any such questions in coherent and satisfactory fashion. I can think of some, for example, whose excellence has earned them patrons with elite resources in a field lacking due competition: in turf racing, perhaps, or in a pool struggling for depth, as is sadly the case at present in California. But there are other cases so egregious that their patrons should ask themselves whether they would sound any more convincing, after the barn is raided someday, than did those who piously pronounced their shock after the arrests of Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis.

Servis, of course, brought Maximum Security (New Year's Day) to the same race as Mandaloun–Sunday's Pegasus S.–for his first start following wildly contrasting fortunes at the Derby, only to be turned over at 1-20. However things play out for Mandaloun from here, I'm scandalized to hear people urging that the Triple Crown schedule be revised to accommodate the behavior of horsemen today. No sir! No ma'am! A thousand times, no. If the horses we are breeding (or their trainers) aren't equal to the time-honored test, then that's something we all need to know. Rather a weaker Triple Crown series than a weaker breed.

Hot Rod Charlie | Sarah Andrew

Now, so long as it's only a few mavericks of high principle who make a stand on resilience and constitution, then it's going to remain difficult for breeders to make that work at the marketplace. Oxbow, for instance, had begun to seem a pretty impossible commercial proposition by the time he came up with last week's GI Belmont S. runner-up Hot Rod Charlie. But if every other operation could meet the exemplary standards of Calumet, who gave Oxbow a thorough grounding before he ran a superb race in all three Classics, then breeders would know themselves for a fact to be using materials that have been honestly tested. (As it is, of course, very few farms do so–and that confines a branding guarantee to the likes of Oxbow, and others on his roster like Keen Ice and now Bravazo, effectively trading somewhat lesser performance eligibility for unimpeachable toughness.)

I have no idea whether Hot Rod Charlie has arrived in time to bring his sire back from the brink, but I do know that when his own time comes to go to stud, this nugget of a horse will owe his credentials every bit as much to Oxbow as to the remarkable mare who has also given us, in Mitole (Eskendereya), a champion sprinter by another unfashionable stallion.

Because what Hot Rod Charlie did last Saturday was absolute throwback stuff. Maybe he couldn't have done it, but for sitting out the Preakness. We'll never know now, obviously. But you'd like to have seen it tried, because this was one of the most heroic exhibitions of carrying speed in defeat you'll ever see.

As has been widely remarked by now, Hot Rod Charlie's 22.78 opening quarter was the fastest ever recorded in the Belmont S. His 46.49 half was beaten only by a horse called Secretariat. Here, clearly, was the work of a sibling to Mitole. Yet while the two horses who shadowed this pace floundered into oblivion entering the stretch, Hot Rod Charlie responded to the challenge of the crop leader (and that, in terms of accomplishment, is plainly what the superbly professional Essential Quality {Tapit} remains for now) by summoning his inner Oxbow and opening a gap of 11 lengths on the Preakness winner.

Essential Quality | Sarah Andrew

Congratulations, then, to Antony Beck of Gainesway for having secured a place for this extraordinary young horse alongside his champion Tapit, now the only sire of modern times to sire a fourth Belmont winner. (On which basis, as we explored midweek, Tapit stands as a transatlantic foil to Galileo {Ire} himself, in terms of wholesome Classic influences.)

Perhaps the whole Derby trauma might have played out differently had Hot Rod Charlie not allowed Medina Spirit (Protonico) to control such a processional tempo. Regardless, the pluck of “Chuck” is going to land a big one at some point, perhaps on the doorstep of some of his younger owners at Del Mar in November. If so, he could offer the game valuable succour in this time of need. For if the $1,000 yearling who won the Derby has quickly proved a public relations disaster, then a $17,000 short yearling offers a pricelessly accessible combination: an enthusiastic, multi-generational group of sportsmen, on the one hand; and some truly venerable antecedents on the other. (As we've often noted, he's the final legacy of his late breeder Edward A. Cox, Jr.; and was raised at Hermitage Farm by a man, in Bill Landes, who condenses all the sagacity and dignity our business needs so sorely today.)

So let's look on the bright side, as is seldom hard to do with Saratoga and Del Mar on the horizon. Despite continuing legal ructions over the Derby, there are many more welcome “positives” brewing in our environment. For one thing, paradoxically enough in the circumstances, we've just negotiated a first Classic season without Lasix. We have happy crowds restoring vitality to our great occasions. We have a bloodstock market suggestive of impatient demand. And we have a renewed sense of vibrancy and relevance at that cherished bastion of tradition, Keeneland, in a series of flawless appointments starting with that of Shannon Arvin. This regeneration, which has since included the hiring of Tony Lacy and Gatewood Bell, was extended Thursday by the naming of Cormac Breathnach as Director of Sales Operations.

Breathnach will leave a void at Airdrie, but then it was only in measuring up to such a peerless farm that he proved his eligibility for wider responsibility in our industry. Rather like the people who gave us Hot Rod Charlie, Airdrie combines the best of the old school with the dynamism of youth. The standards Governor Jones has established are being scrupulously maintained by his son Bret, as vice-president, and Ben Henley as general manager. And so long as our community has such people in our corner, setting an inflexible premium on integrity and class, we'll keep producing not just the right kind of horses but also the right kind of horsemen.

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This Side Up: Mourning Two Exceptions, Lamenting the Rule

The shocking loss this week of the young gun Laoban, preceded just days earlier by that of the venerable Malibu Moon, could not fail to renew the kind of questions we should all keep asking themselves about how a stallion can make an enduring reputation.

Both had started out in a regional program, having shown only marginal eligibility for a stud career on the racetrack, before quickly earning migration to Kentucky. If that was just about all they had in common, then their different roles on two of the biggest commercial rosters will have made the exit of both deeply grievous for their respective farms.

Malibu Moon will be remembered as an important horse perhaps not so much for his genetic legacy, notable as it was, as for his founding contribution to the new Spendthrift. He arrived from Castleton Lyons in 2008 as one of just three stallions to relaunch a farm that has since presided over a revolution in commercial breeding. By that stage, he had already elevated his fee to $40,000, from an opening $3,000 under the estimable Pons family at Country Life Farm. Over the years that followed, Malibu Moon weighted down the roster as B. Wayne Hughes set about trying to float young stallions like Into Mischief.

That horse was famously launched into the backdraft of the financial crisis, with incentives that other farms considered ruinous until they started introducing similar schemes themselves. We'll never know whether Into Mischief might have fallen between the cracks in a more conventional environment. As it was, Malibu Moon remained the elder statesman even as the younger paragon established the viability to an experiment meanwhile expanding giddily in both quantity (to two dozen stallions) and quality (over the past couple of years Hughes has corralled a conspicuous series of upgrades).

Laoban, in contrast, was last fall drafted onto another industrial roster that had lately found itself in need of rejuvenation. The brutal loss two years ago of Pioneerof The Nile, at just 13, left all WinStar's top sires in the same veteran bracket as Malibu Moon: Distorted Humor was then 26, Tiznow and More Than Ready 22, and Speightstown 21. Tiznow has since been pensioned, and Distorted Humor is being managed with due restraint; but Speightstown has bucked one of the most witless prejudices around by actually earning a fee increase in the pandemic economy. I look forward to him emulating Danzig, who conceived War Front and Hard Spun respectively when aged 24 and 26, and so rebuking those who discern some inherent deterioration in the corrosive work of fashion plus competition from cheaper sons.

Be that as it may, happily WinStar have meanwhile seen Constitution step up to the plate, with plenty of promising new recruits in his slipstream. What was interesting about Laoban, much like Daredevil after his repatriation from Turkey to Lane's End, is that he had effectively been rebranded. At precisely the stage where most young sires are creaking under the weight of new, unproven competition, Laoban had demonstrated that the rewards for a fast start are just about as impulsive and disproportionate as the punishment for a slow one.

Think about sires like–well, how about Orb, the most accomplished son of Malibu Moon? When Orb, like Laoban, was about to launch his third crop of juveniles two years ago, he was already confined to just 28 mares. Last year, incredibly, he received seven. Unsurprisingly, he has since been given a fresh start in Uruguay–leaving behind O Besos, who made up more ground than any rival when fifth in that processional GI Kentucky Derby.

One of few others to close in the race was Laoban's son Keepmeinmind, whose Grade I placing the day after Simply Ravishing won the GI Darley Alcibiades S. last fall was sufficient to start an overnight auction to bring their sire to Kentucky. Was that 24-hour breakout more significant than, say, Orb producing GI Spinaway winner Sippican Harbor? Yes, Laboan was working from New York mares, and has come up with handful of other stakes operators; whereas Orb failed to build on his opportunities at no less a farm than Claiborne. But if Laoban was indeed about to become an important stallion, then it would have remained pretty challenging to explain why.

A fairly ordinary page was only somewhat improved by his own contribution. Yes, he was a conduit for a very expensive sire whose other sons in this intake, Nyquist and Outwork, suggest something that can be recycled. But now that all bets are off, I must confess that a fee of $25,000 for Laoban, in a market where Malibu Moon himself (126 stakes winners, 51 graded stakes winners, 17 Grade I winners) was down to $35,000, seemed strong.

Built into that fee, it seemed, was the expectation of renewed market momentum accompanying a “rebirth” in the Bluegrass. It's almost as though a stallion like this gets to be a freshman twice over.

I feel terribly sorry for the WinStar team, to lose Laoban so soon. A young stallion is one of the ultimate symbols of virility in all Nature, and an abrupt death like his–or that of Pioneerof the Nile–is all the more shocking as a result. For the rest of the industry, meanwhile, it's a shame that we won't now get to find out properly whether bringing Laoban to Kentucky was opportunism or an inspired gamble. Because it does us all good, especially the inflexible purists among us, when things happen that don't fit our templates.

It's not as though even the aristocratic Malibu Moon could satisfy us entirely, as he was routinely wheeled out on behalf of any number of instant breakdowns: “This could be another Danzig, another Malibu Moon!” What a difficult business this is, when that is so much more resonant a hope than announcing: “This could be another Orb!”

As it is, Orb's failure leaves the Malibu Moon branch of the A.P. Indy dynasty looking rather precarious–though I must say I do give a decent chance to Gormley, down to a giveaway fee as his first runners hit the track.

When Laoban reached the same crossroads last year, he just hit the pedal and raced straight ahead. But so many stallions, nowadays, are at this point diverted into a blind alley by nervous breeders. The world has changed since Malibu Moon lent gravitas to an experimental new regime at Spendthrift. Nowadays, the rookie stallion is the absolute last to require an incentive scheme. If you were to introduce Share The Upside (and equivalent offers elsewhere) today, you'd surely retreat a step and offer future breeding rights for supporting those stallions under most pressure. It's not commitment to first and second books that stud accountants need, but to third and fourth, or fourth and fifth.

We mentioned Daredevil. Well, he covered 376 mares across his first three seasons at WinStar. Yet he plummeted from 140 mares to 21 as his first runners were approaching the track. Hence his sale to Turkey.

As I've often said, it's neither the farms nor the breeders who are principally to blame for commercial obsession with unproven sires, but those directing consumer investment. Breeders are just anticipating the market. Orb, Daredevil and Laoban are all extreme examples of what happens when young stallions reach the squeeze point. Orb, to be fair, was indulged with four consecutive three-figure books before being abandoned. It's the nature of the beast that most stallions would never succeed, even if guaranteed 140 mares for a decade. Nonetheless, stallions at this stage generally tend to be punished or rewarded unduly according to their first dividends.

The kind of imbalance that has caused paternalist intervention–and litigation–on stallion books could perhaps be avoided if the consumers, on the one hand, were not so poorly advised; and if the farms, on the other, could move back their incentive schemes to support the stallions who nowadays could most do with the help. Otherwise, unlike with Malibu Moon and Laoban, the only respects we ever pay them will be in obituaries.

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This Side Up: Like It or Not, All in this Together

This time, it's not just the Susans that have a black eye.

You'll forgive me a little hesitation before addressing the 146th running of a race that can seldom have been staged in so febrile a context. Two weeks ago, I was incautious enough in this column to hope for just a nice, boring Derby, after the rancour of 2019 and the dismal postponement of 2020. Then, last week, I asked why even his own industry had been so ungenerous to a trainer who had now won four of his seven Derbys with horses that had at various times changed hands for an aggregate $54,500.

Me and my big mouth, huh? But then I'm no different from anyone else. Every single member of our community will feel like he or she has something at stake in the latest contamination of its standing in the wider world: from our judgement, to our very livelihoods. By the same token, we all have a share in how we go about repairing matters.

Because this is not just a question of whether or not Bob Baffert can cogently secure exculpation. The merits of his case will be tested by due process. For the rest of us, the imperative will remain the same regardless of the outcome. We cannot keep missing our cue. If all we do is mutter resentfully, every time society turns up the spotlight, then we can't be surprised if the theatre gradually empties until they take off the show altogether.

True, some of Baffert's own peers have responded with candid vexation to the latest and most conspicuous fissure he has opened in perceptions of our sport. They have been irritated by his emotive attempts to depict himself as a victim of “cancel culture”, and to transpose fault from his own regime–which seems, on a charitable reading, at least to be curiously accident-prone–to a lack of regulatory discrimination.

Albeit Baffert has raised the bar, his profession includes many paragons of achievement who have never had so much as peppermint on a horse's breath. These tend to respect boundaries rather than push them. Yet even some who position themselves on the “pragmatic” end of the therapeutics spectrum are exasperated. They view Baffert's history of infringements not as inherently sinister but as tiresome and avoidable.

Some feel that even proceeding to Pimlico with Medina Spirit (Protonico) guarantees a lose-lose scenario both for his connections and for the sport as a whole. To be clear, The Stronach Group have handled an invidious position competently. They couldn't and shouldn't stop the horse running. Nor could they have made their position more accessible and coherent than by a) rightly stating that “we cannot make things up as we go along” while also b) stipulating with Baffert exhaustive pre-competition testing. But it's a horrible situation, all round, with the hapless horse transformed overnight from a symbol of hope to one of despair. If he is beaten, connections will have gained nothing from standing up for his right to run. And if he does win, well, it'll be interesting to hear what kind of reception he gets on returning to unsaddle–and, indeed, when entering the Belmont paddock with his trainer's third Triple Crown on the line.

As we've already suggested, however, the story has already left Baffert and Medina Spirit far behind. (Which is exactly what makes so many people mad at Baffert, even if they consider his horse a perfectly deserving Derby winner.) Predictably enough, the mainstream news agenda has hastened to combine this trauma with various others recently endured by our sport, too wearily familiar to require reprising here. Just as predictably, and just as promptly, apologists have complained of a parallel conflation, so that trainers concerned only for the welfare of their horses are tarred with the same brush as those who cheat brazenly with blood doping or steroids.

But you know what, that's exactly why people out there in Main Street can't tell the difference between, say, Christophe Clement and Rick Dutrow. What else can we expect, if people inside the business keep telling the lay audience that they just don't understand, and please to go away? The choice is clear: insist on our gray areas, or sacrifice them to a corporate clarity of purpose. As it is, what is the world beyond our parish supposed to make of professional associations litigating for what will inevitably be perceived (however unfairly, and however complex the reality) as their constitutional right to dope racehorses?

Medina Spirit this week at Pimlico | MJC photo

We cannot keep putting each new alarm back on “snooze”. It's only human for Baffert, in a corner like this, to be turning round the guns so that it's all someone else's fault: hyperregulation, clumsy veterinarians, whomever. But the rest of us have to do better than that. Whatever the merits of his own case, we're all in that same corner now. And we have to earn, really earn, a way out.

So for now forget all those picograms and thresholds, and whether Baffert is as innocent as he claims, or whether he's a little too reckless, or worse. The fact is that our whole culture, to this point, has enabled far more obviously egregious cases at every point of the compass: guys who are thriving because a) the worst that can happen is that your assistant gets a few days with his name on the racecard and b) too many investors would prefer a piece of a barn's inexplicable strike-rate than to admit that it's actually all too explicable.

Some stables won't even enter at particular tracks, or against particular trainers, because they know they won't be in a clean fight. Many of us, especially when patrons of Messrs. Servis and Navarro professed such amazed indignation, have remembered Captain Renault being “shocked, shocked” that gambling is taking place in Rick's Café. (He is, of course, promptly handed his winnings by a croupier.)

Let's not kid ourselves either that this is only happening at bush tracks, or that we can solve everything by turning Baffert into a pantomime villain. Just as he can't blame everyone else, nor can everyone else blame only Baffert. Do that, and we'll very soon discover how short a slip divides frying pan and fire.

In the end, Captain Renault comes good. But he needs the inspiration of high-principled Victor Laszlo, the one man in Casablanca whose conscience permits him to sleep well. So who, in our business, will step up for that role?

Well, again without presuming any judgement on Baffert himself, it was fascinating to see B. Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift yet again taking a lead. Hughes prides himself on not giving a damn what other people think, so long as he is satisfied that he is doing right. That attitude has not always endeared his rivals, even if they have largely ended up imitating his every move. And you can bet that nothing has panicked Baffert this week more than Spendthrift “hitting the pause button”.

Having always proudly plowed a different furrow from what the English know as “the Establishment”, Hughes has also been in the vanguard in facilitating microshare entry into elite racing. Quite clearly, he understands how the very survival of our sport no longer depends on the jousting of wealthy egos, but on popular engagement. And that requires us to go out there with absolutely nothing to hide.

If we can do that, then we might be granted the respect and time to solve our other problems: breakdowns, say, or what to do about the whip. (Besides, one of the key premises of hay, oats and water is obviously to prevent breakdowns.) But first we have to go into Main Street ready to show everyone, with undiluted honesty and pride, every single thing we do with these beautiful animals.

Oh, one more footnote. The biggest hole in this horse race may not be where everybody is looking. Because whatever Baffert may or may not have to explain, his peers have fallen badly short in presenting just three of the Derby field for the second Classic. If their regimes are really so wholesome, then they shouldn't be scared of what history tells us: that many a Preakness winner has left behind Derby defeat precisely because of a robustness that wasn't artificial.

It's all very well telling Baffert that he must turn out every pocket when he comes to a big race. But he might be entitled to wonder whether one or two of his rivals meanwhile have nothing to hide except their racehorses.

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