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By PETER CHEW
In the early 1870s, when steeplechasing was still a novelty in this country, a writer named Eli Perkins struggled to convey the excitement of a jumping race to those who had never seen one. Perkins advised his readers to imagine a horse race “over walls, ditches, and hedges — over the pastures. Think of fire engines bound for a fire; think of a mad horse race up the Roman Corso.”
Indeed, there is no more exciting sight in all the world than a field of steeplechasers in flight over “walls, ditches and hedges” — or over timber, brush, or the plastic National Fences that make up most American steeplechase courses today. Steeplechasing is a glorious, hellfor-leather sport that evolved from fox hunting.
“A steeplechasing course, no matter where it is located, is merely a manicured version of a line of hunting country,” notes John Ellis Rossell, Jr., historian of the Maryland Hunt Cup, the
Peter Chew is Washington correspondent for The Blood-Hone, and the author of The Ken tuck; Derby: The Flnt 100 Yean. His articles on horses have appeared in American Heritage, Smltheontan, Sport* 111 nitrated, Town ft Country, and the like. As a boy. he schooled hunters and chasers under trainer Norman Haymaker at the late Dr. Lewis M. Allen's Clifton Farm in Behytitte. Yirgtnld..
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