Steeplers Tricked by Hurdle Fences

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 737, 9 August 1929, Page 12

Steeplers Tricked by Hurdle Fences

PENALTY IT GRAVE RISKS It seems almost paradoxical that many proved Steeplers find difficu ty in negotiating hurdfes when they return to the easier game. Yet that is the explanation some good judges put forward in Sydney during last week to account for Quick Deal’s fall, with such tragic results for liughie Cairns at Moonee Valley, comments a Sydney writer. Quick Deal had safely negotiated the Randwick and Caulfield steeple courses, so his inability to clear the Moonee Valley hurdles, an easy course, has again laid the foundation for an assertion that bringing horses straight from the bigger jumps to the smaller is a business attended by grave risk. Treat Hurdles Lightly Whether it is that, after having been faced with the big obstacles, horses are deluded into the belief that they can merely step over tbe hurdles, and thus treat them negligently, or whether they cannot gauge the jumps properly, the fact remains that some of the best jumpers in Australia have met with accident in that manner. Palbi, winner of the A.J.C. and the Australian Steeple, and subsequently killed in an A.J.C. Hurdle, is a recent example. It is not generally known that, many years ago, a small hurdle was placed in the straight at Randwick as an obstacle after the horses had cut in for the home run in steeplechases. But so many certain winners were brought down by this small jump that the A. J.C. subsequently took the hurdle The anti-climax of coming from the formidable jumps to this almost negligible hurdle was too much for many horses. They misjudged it. with unfortunate results for backers.