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Untold Tales of the Turf BY SALYATOR 9 u in o a li f h n s jj f i g i 1 j c c I r -y i . j , , 1 ; i ; ; ; 1 - , i l 1 1 1 t " r r I 5 f - r . i , . s i . s I I j 1 e !. r n n d n a a 3 n jt lr do e c lt 11 n a i- s. h! e ly il 2r ,-e re of 3f ie 2r of Df Ly "When a new jockey that looks like a real c star swims into the horsemens ken he imroc- diately becomes interested. Riding talent is, so far as the demand gees, far in excess e of the supply. It always has been and it v always will be and the reason is not far to v seek. The great jockey should have the physique of a boy, almost of a child, yet 13 he should possess the strength, the skill and E the thinking powers of a man. Such a com- c bination is rare because against the rulc3 of nature. A great jockey is, therefore, in a Y sense a lusus naturae in plain English, a n freak. The case is a parallel to those which are 0 of so common upon the dramatic and operatic v stages, of roles written for youthful char- 0 acters which almost no youthful performer has the capacity adequately to portray. A a famous prima donna not long ago said in an j. interview that for years she had aspired to sing a certain famous role; but did not feel j safe in attempting it because not yet ready in technical equipment. "I have the equipment now," she went on, "both vocal and dramtatic-but, alas, I am too old! I cannot look the part. Consequently I shall never essay it. The operatic stage is already 1 crowded with impersonations of that sort and c shall not add one more. Not even the most glorious singing and acting can make con- vincing a girl of eighteen portrayed by a J robust woman twice that age." j WHAT HAPPENS TO A JOCKEY. c Such candor is rare, but it illustrates the situation exactly. Just about as the jockey j arrives at greatness in capacity he finds his occupation gone because he is too old i. e., too heavy- to "make the weight." We all j know what agonies jockeys suffer in their efforts to do that. The greatest one that j ever lived, if fame is a criterion, Fred Archer, lost his life in the effort to subdue his j rebellious "too, too solid flesh." And how many artists of the pigskin have been forced onto the ground for the same reason. j It is instructive to read that Everett , Haynes, who is coming back to America next summer to ride Epinard in his races here, , expatriated himself to France in 1921 because he was getting too heavy to have any chance in his native land. But this exemplifies still another side of the question. Namely, that we are outlawing many of our best riders by keeping our weight-scale too low. Riders . that have outlived their usefulness here Haynes being by no means the first in this , category can go to Europe and a new lease : of life opens out before them. The weight- . scale is higher there and they can continue , to practice their profession. Which they : oftentimes do with distinguished success. The moral of this part of the story is that our weight-scale should be raised. If anybody will" take a list of the principal performances of the premier thoroughbreds of England, France and the Antipodes and compare it with a similar list of the performances of Americas premier horses, he will at once discover that on the basis of weight carried perhaps the supreme test of all America runs a bad last. And that is another reason why so many foreign turfmen sniff at the : American thoroughbred. THE GREAT JOCKEY. It may be said that the great jockey, like ! the great poet, is "born, not made." Of r course there are exceptions. Turfmen of I experience can recall celebrated riders who, , upon their debuts, were anything but prom- ising material and would not have been 1 picked for the roles they were destined to play. A famous instance of this was no less a star than "Snapper" Garrison himself. The ! crudity of his early endeavors was glaring and many a prophet declared that here was 5 a cub that "Father Bill" would never be able 2 to lick into shape, manually or metaphor-i - ically. Yet Garrison developed into one of f the greatest riders that the American turf f has ever seen. Would .that we had a few r like him today! Young Ivan Parke, whose star has risen so J blazing above the horizon, who is so sensa-e tionally THE jockey of the hour, is, a case - of the born rider. One not veritably born 1 to the pigskin could never have done what t he has, in the way he has done it. He can 1 do intuitively what the ordinary rider can 1 never do, and what even extraordinary ones, for the most part, never can except after r a long, and strenuous apprenticeship. In his s first season as a full-fledged jockey he takes s the honors from all America. And this at the e age of seventeen. Any way you take the e feat, it is amazing. It leads to high hopes for the future of f such a lad, but it remains for that future to disclose the boys real metal. The list of great riders that success has spoiled is a long: one. How many brilliant lights have been 1 snuffed out because of their owners inability to "stand prosperity." Fortune has received the boy from Idaho with her most alluring smiles; but easily she can frown and turn her back if he proves incapable of right use of what she offers him. The abuse of her favors brings always the same penalty, j It is to be hoped that Parke, and his advis-! ers, will make no mistakes in this matter. j Numerous noted English jockeys have writ-r ten their memoirs or, it would be more cor-J j rect to say, have related them to some scribe for purposes of publication. But as a rule such productions are disappointing. Chif-n neys "Genius Genuine" and Custances "Riding Recollections" are perhaps the most worth while. It is not strange that jockeys j should possess no literary faculty, nor that j their stories, after passing through the ver-a bal mill of a nack writer, should lack fas-jcination or appeal, save as curiosities. I have , often been struck, in trying to get anything1 worth while out of a jockey, at how little i-1 he had to tell, and how limited was his -capacity to tell it. Few of them, no matter what their experience, can tell you much of I anything about the horses they have ridden that you really "want to know." It is only i a select few, of superior intelligence, who J seem to have anything but the most hazy or ready-made ideas. j The superior jockey whose flesh "sets him j down," in most cases becomes a trainer or tries to and often one of renown. Quite a leng list of this class could be tabulated. But it is also hard to get anything out of any of them, especially! if they have any idea tnat they may be talking "for pubii-is c e v v 13 E c Y n 0 of v 0 a j. j 1 c J j c j j j j j , , . , : . , : : ! r I , 1 ! 5 2 - f f r J - 1 t 1 1 r s s e e f 1 cation." Some of them are as gun-shy, In this respect, as cabinet ministers or a general staff. "Mums THE word" in their 1 vocabularies. Else they put you off with more or less polite nothings, following the precept of Talleyrand, who said that lan- guage was given to man for the purpose of concealing his thoughts. In this day and age it is, of course, no wonder that the trainer, or the jockey, is not anxious to communicate what the daily print terms "stable secrets." The business "putting one over" is sufficiently difficult without in any way tipping ones hand to of all things! a scribe. All attaches of big and not seldom of small stables are as a part of the days work, supposed to keep what they know "up their sleeves." Those who "leak" are not, as a rule, apt to linger long on their jobs. STABLES THAT COFRT PUBLICITY. The exceptions are the cases of those stables and owners given to courting the limelight, who batten on advertising and are out for it first, last and all the time, above everything else. We have always upon the turf the advertising owner, trainer and jockey, whose idea of fame is a headline on the sporting page, and immortality, one upon the front page. They will do everything but die for it that is, for a price. The exceptions are those turfmen of colossal vanity who are ready to pay the price. For them the brass band is too noiseless and the cinema too inert. Perhaps long years after a famous horse has passed out of his hands, a great trainer may choose to "unbutton" about him. But by that time what he has to say "dont mean anything." The horses of yesterday interest only a few sentimentalists or turfmen of the old school. What anybody even a great trainer says about any of them is negligible, at best Even Talleyrand would probably not have hesitated to talk freely about "monarchs I have met" let us say, "twenty years later." INTIMATE DETAILS ABOUT HORSES It is little, intimate things about horses that are often the most interesting, just as the same thing is true about humans. We can ge their pedigrees out of the stud book, or Mr. Beckers marvelous charts, and their performances out of the racing calendars. But to clothe these bones with flesh, other things are necessary. The men best fitted to provide that is tho men who have trained, ridden and cared for them. But their inclination, or ability, to do so is in most cases baffling. John Porter, near the end of his long and so successful career, wrote, by proxy, the story of it. Mr. Edward Moorehouse was assigned the task of making a book of the narrative. The result, "John Porter of Kingsclere," is one of the most valuable works that a turfmans book shelf can house. It is, in many ways," a model of its kind. But when, one reflects, after reading and re-reading it, what a mere fraction it is of what Porter might have related, and how lacking in glint or glow are many pages that should have been lambent with them, we realize that after all, good as it is, the possibilities were not even approximated. American books in this genre simply do not exist. The turf of no country has, within the past two hundred years, offered greater scope for such works. The "characters," both men and horses, have been almost in- finite in number and diversity, the number of good stories that have died unwritten many of them practically untold in any form beyond computation. Nobody has time, in this busy, jazzy land, to write such books; and if they did, nobody would publish them; and if they did, nobody would read them. In consequence, there will never be even a "now it can be told" chapter to American turf history. One never can tell what may happen. It i.T even possible that in the "dim vista of futurity" somebody may sit himself down to write the story of the American turf in a gossipy, genial, familiar way, ambitious to produce not only one of those books that in the words of Dr. Johnson, "one can sit by the fireside and read before going to bed," but that will keep him from going to bed. But how is he going to do it? Where will his materials come from? The only way he could possibly obtain them would be to have lived a half dozen lives and forgotten nothing, after storing his mind with innumerable facts and items, ideas, incidents and anec-a dotes. This being the case, the hypothetical writer above described will never be more than a figment of my imagination. So the future will never know what it has" lost But is it not possible that little will that future care?
