Thoroughbred Horse Racing
His father owned a stud farm in Suffolk and won the 1815 2,000 Guineas with the colt Tigris. Rous, always fond of the sport became a steward of the Jockey Club in 1838, a position he held almost uninterruptedly to his death. In 1855, he was appointed public handicapper. In that role he introduced the weight-for-age scale. He managed the stables of the Duke of Bedford at Newmarket for many years, and wrote a work on On the Laws and Practice of Horse Racing that procured for him the title of the Blackstone of the Turf.
The Rous Memorial Stakes was named in his honor.
Read more about this topic: Henry John Rous
Famous quotes containing the words thoroughbred, horse and/or racing:
“There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)