George Lambton -- made no secret of doping his horses in a demonstration to stewards
 

George Lambton was a legendary British trainer. He trained for Lord Derby for more than 30 years. He won all the big races of his day.

Thinking he was just a top class horse trainer of his day, I was blown away by how impressive his writing is. However, Lambton was a son of the 2nd Earl of Durham and he was educated at Eton College and Cambridge University.

This is a Vanity Fair caricature of Lambton from 1904:



Lambton wrote a 17-column series called 'Memoirs of the British Turf' -- in two separate columns he touched on doping.

Here is a cut of him writing about when he openly doped:









Interestingly, the famous Whitney silks actually belonged to him. Mary Lou Whitney still runs her horses in those colors. Here is the story of how the Whitney's bought the colors from Lambton:





Lambton's description of how the Whitney's obtained his silks is different than Bill Christine's, who rated the Whitney silks the 2nd most iconic in Racing History behind only the Phipps silks in this DRF piece: http://www.drf.com/events/top-10-mos...racing-history

Good stuff - Thanks for posting it.

hell of a story.
the powers that be didn't do anything than...are they any more worried about it all now?

Not judging by the # of 30 % trainers

http://www.equibase.com/stats/View.c...ear&tb=trainer

I love that article. Especially the bit about how doping will ruin the breed. Nothing new under the sun.

Illegal doping is synonymous with sports. How long did Lance Armstrong get away with it? Hell, if he hadn't been such a d*ck of a human being (according to very entertaining articles I've read; I do not know the man personally) he'd still have those jerseys. And Congress spent a lot of taxpayer money over hearings about steroids in baseball.

I'd be really curious to see a comparison of how many legal medications/supplements a professional athlete (of a fairly grueling sport) regularly ingests, compared with a racehorse. It'd be impossible to do an exact comparison, obviously, but with all the shrieking in the press about hay, oats and water, I wonder how many professional athletes get by with three squares and a multivitamin.

I'm not defending medication use, per se, but the nature of athletics is pushing a living creature, whether human or animal, past what that body would do normally. A body is going to get sore and injured doing it.

One of the many entertaining people Lambton writes about is a powerful horse owner of her day, the Duchess of Montrose.

A little more on the Duchess:





The church still stands there at Newmarket today:

'a failing not unusual in her sex'. lol

an interesting read for sure.

Great readings, Doug -- thanks for bringing Lambton to our attention.

Actually, after Lambton made his demonstration to the stewards -- the practice of doping was made a criminal offense, in England, the following season.

Here are a couple more cuts:

Here is Lambton writing about some of the things the Europeans learned from the American invasion. Stuff like open windows and open doors in barns, to try and get as much cool air in. Shoes. etc.

so even then it was our fault....

thanks for posting all this, really interesting.

We're # 1! We're #1!

Seriously, these are really fun reads.

darned americans and their drugs and rock and roll..... lol

it is fun to read old articles and letters. as an avid history nerd, i could read articles like the above all day.