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ALMOST A PLEA FOR SLOAN. Nobody seems to have written any comment on the deportation of Tod Sloan from this country, but if the reported statement attributed to him that his offence was winning something over 100 pounds from an officer home from the front is correct, especially when this is connected with the deportation also of a French woman — then at last we may agree that Tod Sloan had really outstayed his welcome. Judged by the last incident, this conclusion si-ems incontrovertible: anil yet what might not have been if this really great jockey had not been spoiled by flattery when all was going well witli him in this country 1 Lord William Berea-ford was one of the best in the world, but he made too much of Tod Sloan and I have seen owners, who need not be named, walk arm in arm with Tod in the paddock at Newmarket. Tod Sloan know-nothing of tin- discipline of a stable-lioys or Jockeys life in England when he came here, and he was dumped into success without having learned anything of the orthodox routine of his position. He could not ""carry corn." as so many other sudden successes have failed to do. and he did many foolish tilings, which led to the racing authorities disliking him in this country and in France: but it was never alleged that Tod Sloan did not do bis best to win every race he ever rode, and the pity is that he was not taken in hand bv a sterner member than Ixn-d William Beresford during his early days in England. There was still time for the old methods to have licked him into shape, and after a few years of that Lord William might have found his sort of higher class treatment also successful: but | oor Tod never got the advantage of the intermediate stage, which should, in his case, have been very rough and ready, and so it has happened — he goes away from this country discredited, though neither in France nor here on account of racing. — "The Special Commissioner" in London Soprtsman.
