REASON FOR WITHDRAWAL.

Epinard will not run for the Lincolnshire Handicap. This is a fact which puts an end to all the conjecture and blind wagering on a matter which has convulsed the world of racing in England, while at the same time paralysing all general interest in this opening event of the English flat-racing season. I make the statement on the authority of M. Pierre Wertheimer, the owner of the world-famous horse, and I have no doubt that within a few hours of the publication of this wire from Paris the horse will have been officially scratched.

May I say that there was a time when there was a very serious intention of running the horse at Lincoln, and, fit and well, his owner and trainer would not have considered the possibility of defeat. The determining factor has been the weather. It has been atrociously unfavourable to the training of hordes in the environs of Maisons Laffitte, where Epinard is trained, and Chantilly. For the last eight or nine days Epinard has done no more than a single quiet canter. Epinard, with 6st, could not win a Lincolnshire Handicap on such a preparation. I was with M. Wertheimer this morning in Paris when the decision was definitely arrived at. No other, in fact, was possible, in view of the report from the trainer, Eugène Leigh, who declared that in the circumstances the horse could only go to Lincoln half-trained. Owner and trainer at least must be given credit for understanding that a half-trained Epinard, at the outset of a new season’s racing, could not hope to do himself justice with 10st on his back at Lincoln. Later in the day I renewed acquaintance at Maisons Laffitte with the distinguished horse, thanks to the courtesy of his owner and the keenness of his trainer to display the most wonderful horse he has ever known in the course of a long and most picturesque career. He was not quite the same old Epinard, especially as he no longer existed as a candidate for honours at Lincoln. He shows all that maturity which should be associated with a highclass thoroughbred when passing from three to four years of age. What struck me at a first glance was the way he has thickened and assumed that masculine look of the four-year-old horse. He has, of course, still the same noble outlook and expression, still the same extraordinarily clean and strong limbs, and the immense suggestion of speed in his general lines. His disposition, too, is that of a child’s pony, for he would allow the stranger to handle him; note the strength of his perfectly arched neck, and feel the sinews and tendons of legs that are as clean and sound today as when he was foaled.