THE TWO THOUSAND GUINEAS.

Evening Star, Issue 4168, 6 July 1876, Page 4

THE TWO THOUSAND GUINEAS.

(Home paper.)

The first great gathering of the year at j head-quarters has passed off with about the I usual amount of excitement—perhaps a i little less than more—and about its usual crowd. The Guineas has been a provokingly difficult race this year to handle. Looked upon throughout the winter as about the greatest certainty for Petrarch ever known, :it became when that horse seemed as good as out of it, a mass of confusion, in which backers and analysts vainly sought for a j clue. When horses are "all together," as the phiase goes, when nearly everything that is going to run has beaten and been beaten by everything else, we are naturally a good deal at sea, and individual fancies become our gttides. "Thebook" tellsus nothing,

for the form of one week is upset by that of j the following one, so we are perforce com- j pelled to listen to rumors of how much this horse has improved and that one gone back, I and do the beet our judgment tells us. Such j has been the state of things this year. How j Kaleidoscope had beiten Father Claret and been twice beaten by him ; how t ; e second favorite, Great Tom, had been defeated on each occasion that he has run, and how Charon, Julius Ctesar, King Death, Coltness, &c., ran in the fashion that is called "in and out" has already been shown, and need not now be repeated. When Petrarch changed hands for the large sum of L 12.000 some two months since, the result was to send him back in the Two Thousand market, a belief being then pretty generally expressed that his new owner would seek to win the race with a horse already his property—Kaleidoscope. Petrarch, however, recovered his position, to lose it again a few weeks ago on being stopped in his work; wlvle his "trial" in the Craven week appeared to have effectu ally settled his chance. On May 2, however, Lord Dupplin backed both his horses, taking 1,500 to 500 about Kaleidoscope and 2,000 to 100 about Petrarch. A reaction

then set in in the quondam favorite's favor, and people began to say that as he won the Middle Park Plate when only half fit, why should he not win the Guineas in simi ar circumstances ? When seen in the paddock, too, he looked so immeasurably superior to anything there the very beau ideal of a firstclass racehorse—that there was something of a rush to get on him, though by the majority his chance was still condemned, and he started at 100 to 6 ; while Kaleidoscope was a hot favorite at 3to 1. There Avas a slight delay at the post and one or two breaks away, but Mr M 'George dropped his Hag to a good start, Camemhert and Julius Caisar being the first to show, but they had not gone far before Petrarch, in the cent, e of the course, took up the running, pulling Luke out of the saddle, and it may with truth bo said that there was nothing else in the race from this point. Glacis and Father Claret were about the first two beaten, and at the Bushes the favorite was evidently in trouble. In vain did Junius Cisear go on in pursuit of Petrarch, who had not even been asked to gallop, and one of the easiest wins ever seen f>r a Two Thousand was recorded in Retraich's favor by three lengths—a great performance and a very great horse As he won the Middle Park unfit, so lie has won the Two Thousand, and in a manner that would seem to show the Derby a mere question of health for him. Directly they passed the post the stentorian voice of a leading bookmaker was heard offering 2,000 to 1,000 against him for the Epsom race, and we believe that price could not be obtained soon afterwards.