Word: gait
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There are two breeds of U. S. racehorses: Thoroughbred and Standardbred. The Thoroughbred, developed in England, races under saddle and runs at a horse's natural gait, a gallop. The Standardbred, a U. S. product, races in harness and runs at a man-trained trot or pace.* For those U. S. citizens who remember the horse-&-buggy days, no sport takes them back so fast as a trotting race, no sport event is more endearing than the Hambletonian, richest and most famed of the 25,000 or more harness races held in the U. S. every summer...
...unique method called scoring: horses parade up the track in double file, turn and trot (or pace) down to the starting line in their lot-drawn post positions. Sometimes ten or 15 scores are required before the starter considers that they have all gone over the line "on their gait" (without breaking stride)-with the "pole" (No. 1) horse nosing ahead. Many times seasoned drivers deliberately spoil the start in order to wear down less experienced drivers or the horse with the No. 1 position...
...injustice that exists in far too many courses. Psychologists at Harvard have worked out an excellent system of marking for large classes. Yet with pitifully few exceptions, the other large courses have failed to take advantage of their refined and scholarly research. They prefer to go their own antiquated gait, leaving their marking system open to chance and injustice...
...heaped-up, Louisville, Ky., says Author Leighton, is the museum piece among U. S. cities. There are the battered columns of Nicholas Biddle's once great United States Bank: "now the windows are bleared and there's a drunk asleep on the crumbling steps." In the great Gait House, financiers once fought over the Louisville & Nashville; in the lobby General Buckner, Confederate hero and Chicago real-estate speculator, smoked his corncob pipe and fought the reformers. At the Music Hall, 43-year-old William Goebel, ranked by Leighton as the greatest field general among U. S. political reformers...
...Walking heel-&-toe, British style, one can move twice as fast (a mile in 6 min., 30 sec.) as with an ordinary gait and two-thirds as fast as the best mile runners...