Word: becher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...start was a beauty, but so tightly packed was the field at the first jump that three horses went down for keeps. At the fifth jump Royal Mail faltered, and Under Bid flashed out in front. Into Becher's Brook (socalled because 100 years ago a Captain Becher came a cropper and dived under its surface in fear of the flying hoofs above him) the great Royal Danieli fell, dunking most of England's shilling bets...
...riding home over a rocky byroad. Stevens used to hang back until most of the field had harried each other into the ditches and hedges, then he would ride triumphantly in over the carnage. Wily Tim Hyde guided Workman that way until Becher's and the Canal Turn had taken their toll on the second round. Then, when the field was at Valentine's Brook again, he nosed Workman in among the leaders...
...before the race the crowd observed the custom of tramping afoot around the world's most dangerous steeplechase course. They swarmed past Becher's Brook-named for the Captain Becher who, spilled by his mount in the 1839 running, dived into the stream to escape being trampled by following horses-past Valentine's, past the deadly Canal Turn, where as many as 22 horses have failed in a single race, round to the water jump before the stands. Next day 36 horses started to make the same circuit twice. Only 13 succeeded...
...them past Becher's Brook Then another American horse, Battleship (son of Man o' War), a small chestnut stallion who began his career as a flat racer, pulled ahead. At Canal Turn, Royal Mail- whose former owner, Hugh Lloyd Thomas, was killed while training to ride the race, whose jockey fractured a collarbone last month-succumbed to his jinx. He burst a blood vessel and pulled out of the race...
Josephine Johnson's first novel, Now in November, took the 1935 Pulitzer Prize on points, for sheer beauty. Last week she went at the hurdle of her second novel- which for authors is what Becher's Brook is for Grand National riders. Interested bystanders shook their heads over a near-cropper, gave odds that she would not finish in the money, and those who attach more value to performance than style said Author Johnson's Pegasus got his feet all mixed up in metaphors, looked better in a show ring than he did over a fence...