Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/123

Rh almost unlimited scope for the operations of the bookmaker, if there were any "ring."

For up to the very last moment it is quite evidently anybody's race. Indeed, it is, if one may so put it, even more "anybody's race" than any horse-race could possibly be. To say that a horse-race is anybody's race means that any one horse seems as likely to outstrip its competitors as any other. To say that a donkey-race with riders standing on the animals' backs is anybody's race may mean—and in this instance does mean—not only that any one donkey seems as likely to outstrip its competitors as any other, but that any one rider seems as likely (or as unlikely) as any other to maintain his balance. And inasmuch as any increase in the speed of the donkey tends to enhance the insecurity of his rider's foothold, and therewith the risk of his disqualification through slipping off its back, it follows that the probability of any one donkey's first passing the post varies inversely as his chance of winning the stakes. His