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A CHAPTER ON JOCKEYS LORD WHARTONS FAN ¬ TASY THE OLD SCHOOL AND THE 7V H FAMOUS FINISHES BY W S VOSBURGH Go on brave youths till ut some future nge Whips shall become the senatorial badge Till England see her jockey senators senatorsMeet Meet all at Westminster in boots and spurs Sec the whole House with mutual frenzy mad madHer Her patriots all in leathern breeches clad Of bets not taxes learnedly debate debateAnd And guide with equal reins a steed or State Whartons Newmarket NewmarketIt It is more than two hundred years since Thomas Lord Wharton penned the above amusing conceit in no doubt a spirit of pleasantry as became his versatility for besides being one of the greatest statesmen of his time he was likewise poet satirist profligate and leader of the English turf The idea of a jockey as a legislator is pleasantly whimsical It is true legislators olttn pass bills with a rider on them and that each party has a whip also that a jockey by hard riding often seconds the motion of his horse but certainly no jockey has yet appeared to realize Lord Whartons fantasy fantasyBut But in their own sphere jockeys have often risen to great heights as we reflect when we recall some brilliant efforts of the boys in boots and breeches Bill Hayward taking a pull on Preakncss to let him catch his breath and coming again to make a dead heat with Springbok for the Saratoga Cup Frank ONeil cunningly waiting with the sluggish Irish Lad and winning the Brooklyn Handicap after a vigorous setto the only way to ride him Clarence Turners terrific finish on Star Charter for the Toronto Cup beating Olambala Schuttingcr on Exterminator making every post a winning one and just beating Purchase for the Cup at Saratoga Joe Nottcr nursing the fasttiring Colin for the Bclmont and just landing the race with a colt ready to sink Ed Garrison coming like a cyclone with Montana for the Surburban and making a Garrison finish a proverb Earl Saude biding his time with Cudgel for the Merchants at Saratoga and racing his field down as if they were hacks or a year later for the same race just squeezing a head cut of Sir Barton against Gnome when nine people out of ten thought it a dead heat Willie Knapp skinning the rails and coming on the inside of Regret lauding old Borrow a winner in the Brooklyn Handicap in the last stride All there were masterpieces of a profession which a multitude admire and in which so few excel excelAs As between the old school of jockeys and the present there is an important difference A majority of the old school were men a majority of the present day arc boys The old school had some jockeys who were fine judges of pace The present day jockey is seldom a judge of pace He doesnt need to be for the races are not over sufficient distance to require knowledge of pace in nursing a horse for his final effort Races nowadays are run with a strong pace from the start and the main object is to get away in front and obtain a good position and then ride as hard as you can This is carried to such excess that the young jockeys often get a horse away without regard as to whether he gets off on his right leg or not The consequence is particularly if there is a very fast pacemaker that his horse never gets into his stride Still the jockeys of today obtain a vastly greater amount of practice than did those of the old school schoolFINE FINE HORSEMANSHIP OFSANDE AND KEOGH KEOGHOne One of the finest exhibitions of riding last season was at Saratoga when Sandc on Thunderclap defeated Keogh on Knot Thunderclap led all the way but Knot hung on and the horses ran the hist half mile head and head and stride for stride Thunderclap had 135 pounds up and Knot twentyfour pounds less but the exertions of these two admirable horse ¬ men was worth the journey to Saratoga to see and to properly describe which the pen cannot give expression With so much the worst of weights it proved Sande a great horseman and some of the officials even went to the jockeys room and congratulated him Another instance of quick thinking was Fators ride on Surf Rider when he won the Babylon Handicap at the Aqueduct September meeting In the stretch he twice tried to come through next the rail Time was short as they were less than an eighth from the winning post and suddenly taking his horse to the outside Fator sat down and riding like a fiend possessed won his race in the last two strides stridesJockeys Jockeys are slow to lodge a complaint against each other so long as they are on friendly terms and it was to provide for this that in 1892 the present Rule 153 of racing was amended to read Nothing in this rule shall prevent the stewards from taking cognizance of foul rid ¬ ing as prior to that time complaint on the part of owner trainer or jockey was necessary At the Jamaica September meeting of 1920 Buxton on Hendrie repeatedly bumped C Kuminers mount Nightstick in the race through the stretch Kummer made no complaint however The stweards sent for Kummer and in reply to the question admitted his horse had been bumped badly otherwise he might have won Hendrie was of course disqualified Being one of the stewards I asked Kummer why he failed to lodge a complaint He replied that he didnt want to make trouble I asked him if he knew that failure to report so palpable a case after he had admitted it made him accessory to the act He replied that he did not know that Mr McNaughton Kummers employer however took the blame upon himself telling me that he had always instructed the jockey never to go running to the stewards with complaints complaintsIt It is rare that any two spectators of a race see incidents alike It is rare too that jockeys will assume blame for an accident Toward the close of the Saratoga meeting of 1920 there was a collision between four horses in a race three of which fell and every one had a different opinion cf the cause War God closed on War Marvel and fell and Dunboyne and Pilgrim coming from behind fell over War God War Marvel went on and finished second Then Rodriguez the rider of War Marvel of his own accord went to the stewards and explained He said that Robinson who rode War God was not responsible but that his Rodriguez1 own mount War Marvel was entirely to blame He stated that his horse bore to the inside blocking War God which struck War Marvel and went down Of course War Marvel was disqualified but it was an incident of unusual candor in a jockey jockeyThe The career of a jockey in this country is short Few of those riding ten years ago are riding now Naturally increasing weight drives many a fine rider from the saddle yet many more are driven out of it toy scandal Undoubtedly the temptations in the life of a jockey are constant but the followers of racing are much too suspicious and ready to credit scandal It is rarely a jockey escapes and once started it passes from lip to lip until owners become alarmed and refuse to employ him He may be quite innocent of any of the charges but he cannot remove the cloud that hangs over him and finally unable to secure sufficient patronage to enable him to exist he is compelled to abandon the only employment of which ke has any knowledge seek a position as trainer or turn stable hand and rub horses horsesSUCCESS SUCCESS OF TIPSTERS A MONUMENT TO HUMAN CREDULITY CREDULITYNot Not infrequently he turns tout or perhaps a tipster and proceeds with pretended information to fool the public President Lincoln is reported to have held that you cant always fool the public But that was precisely what Mr Lincoln was doing when hs said so for what can fool people easier than flattery Mr Lincoln was a politician and in a republic a politician lives by flattering the people Pericles fooled the Athenians Caesar fooled the Romans This practice in a republic does not change its essence by a transfer from a popular to an absolute form of government The flatterer of the people merely puts on a laced coat and pays his court to a monarch The tipster is a monument to human credulity If his information was worth anything is it likely that he would sell it for a pittance when by backing it himself he could win heavily Taken altogether the passing of a jockey ia not a pleasant subject and a great deal could be said about it that is better left unsaid unsaidFrank Frank Robinson the jockey who lost his life in an accident at Bowie in 1919 bid fair to be if he not already was the best of all recent jockeys There was nothing temperamental about him He was always the same cool precise young man yet very keenly alive to sur ¬ rounding conditions Seldom was any complaint heard of his riding foul or of disobeying orders He was selfcontained but always polite an excellent judge of pace and patient with a nervous horse James Rowe trainer of the Whitney stabb told me he considered the death of Robinson one of racings greatest losses I have had many jockeys said Rowe but I never had one who was as good a rider and yet so unspoiled by his success He was the easiest boy to get along with I ever knew He knew what he was about and when he rode for you you knew if your horse was beaten it was no fault of the jockey jockeyIt It would develop jockeys if the racing associations would offer more races for apprentices er jockeys who had never ridden a winner Of course betting men are utterly opposed to them but certainly they could strain a point in the interest of racing Such races afford the only chance to develop any number of riders Trainers will not put novices up against experienced jockeys and unless a boy has a rich stable that will give him a chance he is compelled to go to winter tracks and proprietary meetings in the bush to develop There he is apt to make bad connections and becomes spoiled The late Mr John A Morris made a feature of these races at Morris Park and Mr Butler seems disposed to encourage them at Yonkcrs YonkcrsLast Last season Hymen waved his torch busily among the jockeys Sande Kummer and Clifford Robineon each essayed to toFrom From Cupids shoulder pluck hia painted wings wingsand and fly into the arras of matrimony Or in the words of the sagacious Lord Verulam they have had given hostages to fortune and assumed impedimenta to great enterprise whether of virtue or of mischief Among traincre there is a certain degree of prejudice agwnit a mar ¬ ried jockey They say that no matter how courageous he wai before he takes no chances after f that he loes hi nerve and will not go through a field with hi oldtime luh They even cite instances to confirm their belief It ia easy to understand that a married man feels a greater seme of responsibility for his physical welfare than does a single one His wifo naturally reminds him of dangers to which he formerly was indiffiront This may cause him to be more careful But for this he should not be reproached as in his care to avoid accident ho protects the other jockeys when he protects himself Moat accidents are caused by the recldesw youngsters who know no fear until an accident puts fear into them TWO YEAR OLD SUPEEMAGY Continued from ninth page Emperor of Norfolk made the most exten ¬ sive campaign of any of these thirty two yearolds racing eighteen times and winning twelve and thereafter he trained on to fuller fame llorello which raced seventeen times won fourteen and he also was a glorious threeyearold Hamburg won twelve of six ¬ teen starts Old Rosebud twelve of fourteen and Colin all twelve of his Again wo must accord tho palm however to Tremonta thirteen wins in thirteen starts And more ¬ over Tremont went out of commission beforo the season closed It Is no wonder The class of tho gallery of twoyearolds is disclosed by tho fact that they started in 290 races and won 232 of them which shows that they averaged practically ten starts and won practically eight of them Their total earnings approach two million dollars 1791180 mttlri g their average of money won 59ilS
