. Breeder and sportsman. Horses. VtJGUST 16, 1902] ®he gveebev anb gpovisman Relative Speed ot Champions. ~The New York Herald recalls the fact that in 1891 Robert BonDer was asked why he believod no horse could ever trot a mile in 2:00. His reply was: "Just see what thej have got to do! To make a mile in 2:00 the horse must beat Maud S. more than 350 feet. They have been trying for six years now to beat her just one foot, without doing it, let alone beat- ing her 350 ; Mr. Bonner's graphic style of stating the case brings out forcibly the actual meaning of every advance in the
. Breeder and sportsman. Horses. VtJGUST 16, 1902] ®he gveebev anb gpovisman Relative Speed ot Champions. ~The New York Herald recalls the fact that in 1891 Robert BonDer was asked why he believod no horse could ever trot a mile in 2:00. His reply was: "Just see what thej have got to do! To make a mile in 2:00 the horse must beat Maud S. more than 350 feet. They have been trying for six years now to beat her just one foot, without doing it, let alone beat- ing her 350 ; Mr. Bonner's graphic style of stating the case brings out forcibly the actual meaning of every advance in the trotting record, and the vast difference between a mile in 2:08} and a mile in 2:00. To the average horseman it is much easier to think of a mere chipping away of quarter seconds and seconds until the 2:00 mark is reached than to conceive of a trotter great enough to leave the peerless Maud S. away up the homestretch, 20 yards back of the dis- tance flag, a? he dashes under the wire. This picture seems so preposterous to horsemen of ten years ago that when Mr. Bonner presented it in a friendly con- troversy with General B. F. Tracey concerning the ultimate speed of the trotting horse, it carried more weight than any argument the then Secretary of the Navy could advance, and the owner of Maud S. ac- cordingly had the majority of horsemen on his side. Yet within one year of this time the trotting record had dropped from 2:08| to 2:04, and Maud S. was left nearly 200 feet behind the new champion, Nancy Hanks, in the imaginary race of record holders. A radical improvement in sulky building doubtless con- tributed much, if not all, to this marked reduction of the record, but improvements in sulkies, tracks, training methods, etc., have aided nearly every other champion to advance the limit of trotting speed, and* they are always to be considered. A computation of the relative speed of the record breakers shows that Cresceus 2:02}, the champion of to-day, would beat Maud S. 267 feet
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjecthorses, bookyear1882
