e baron d'Etreilles
undertakes to tell us why. The object of the handicap, he says, being to
equalize the chances of several horses of different degrees of merit,
the handicapper is in a manner obliged to make it next to impossible for
the first-rate horses to win; otherwise, the owners of the inferior
animals, seeing that they had no chance, would prefer to pay forfeit,
and the harmony, as it were, of the contest--the even balancing of
chances, which is of the very essence of the handicap--would be lacking.
On the other hand, the handicapper cannot bring the chances of the
really bad horses up to the mean average, no matter how much he may
favor them in the weights, and thus it nearly always turns out that the
Omnium, like every other important handicap, is won by a horse of the
second class, generally a three-year-old, whose real merits have been
hidden from the handicapper. This concealment is not so difficult as it
might seem. There are certain owners who, when they have satisfied
themselves by trials made before the spring races that they have in
their stables a few horses not quite good enough to stand a chance in
the great contests, but still by no means without valuable qualities,
prefer to reserve them for an important affair like the Omnium, on which
they can bet heavily and to advantage, especially if they have a "dark
horse," or one that is as yet unknown. Otherwise, to what use could
these second-rate horses be put? If one should run them in the spring
they might get one or two of the smaller stakes, after which everybody
would have their measure. Their owners, therefore, show wisdom in
keeping them out of sight, or perhaps, as some of the shrewder ones do,
by running them when rather out of condition, and thus ensuring their
defeat by adversaries really inferior to themselves. In this way the
handicapper is deceived as to their true qualities, and is induced to
weight them advantageously for the Omnium.

Many readers but little conversant with turf matters will no doubt be
scandalized to hear of these tricks of the trade, and will be apt to
conclude that good faith is no more the fashion at Longchamps than at
the Bourse, and that cleverness in betting, as in stockjobbing, consists
in knowing when to depreciate values and when to inflate them, as one
happens to be a bull or a bear in the market. The truth is, that no
rules can be devised, either by Jockey Clubs or by imperial parliaments,
that can put a sto