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PETER PAN OF THE TURF Sam Heapy Rode 2,916 Winners and Trained Over 2,000. How an English Jockey Gained Fame as Rider and Trainer in Belgium Re- , markable Career. Sam Heapy, the Peter Pan of the turf, Is credited with having ridden 2,916 winners and trained over 2,000. But who is Sam Heapy? Let a correspondent of the London Sporting Life tell the story: OSTEND. Watching Sam Heapy winning the Ostend Derby the other day for his patron, Baron Brugmann de Walzin, it occured to me that here, surely, is one of the greatest romances the turf has ever known. Sam, as all the racing world knows, is an Englishman. Derby is his birthplace, year 1882. As befitted one coming of a family connected with the turf from time immemorial, he was apprenticed to the great game, his master being Golding, a well-known Newmarket trainer of the nineties. "My first ride," Sam told me, "was in a race in which Tod Sloan was riding the favorite; so that is going back a few years." Golding apparently did none too well, and Sam began looking around for other avenues of fame. AMERICAN INVASION. It was the time of the American invasion of the English Turf. What with Tod Sloan, the Reiffs, "Skeets" Martin and others, opportunities for English .boys were none too promising. An offer came from Goffin, a trainer In Belgium ,000 a year; in those days a good salary for a youthful jockey. So in 1900 Sam Heapy landed in this country, and here he has remained, the Peter Pan of the turf. In his first year he became leading jockey and since then he has ridden 2,916 winners, thus beating Archers phenomenal figures. And how is this for a record? In 1903 he won the Belgian Derby, and thirty-three years later repeated the feat! In between times, of course, he has won the race times innumerable, but to win it again after such a period is a marvelous example of fitness and skill. "They never say poor old fellow to me," remarked the smiling Sam. "I feel as well now as I did when I was twenty." "What about your 3,000 winners?" I inquired. "All going the right way," he replied, "I hope to reach them in the course of the next year or so. T ride ten gallops every morning, dont worry about weight I can do 118 pounds comfortably and feel as good as ever." But Heapy has other claims to fame which must make him an immortal of the turf. TRAINS SEVENTY HORSES. Will It be believed when I say that not only is he first jockey to Baron Brugmann, charged with steering 100 winners past the post every year, but also private trainer, with seventy horses in his care? Yet it is so. He and the Baron have been associated for twenty-four year, and Sam has trained over 2,000 winners for his patron. Some of our gentlemen trainers in England would be horror stricken with the work that Sam does training, riding gallops, then, in the afternoon, races, and at night that unending clerical work which is the bane of a trainers life. However, in the latter respect he is greatly helped by his wife, who looks after the accounts, supervises the boys and generally keeps the big stable running smoothly. An able woman is madame, au fait with all that goes on in racing circles. If the Great War had not come in 1914 there is no saying what records Sam would have achieved. A NEAR THING! As it was, he was lucky to escape alive. He was accused of shooting at a German officer, and, with six pistols pointed at his head by an infuriated patrol, it was touch-end-go whether his career came to an untimely end. The Germans compromised by packing him off to Ruhleben, where he remained a prisoner until the armistice. Sams best was 196 winners in a season. But of all the historic feats he has accomplished, that of riding all the winners in one day for the same owner must represent a record that will stand forever. It makes one wonder what the other pro-prietaires thought about the matter! Sam is now an institution. He bears his honors modestly and works as hard and even harder than he did in his salad days. Always smiling; never worried. A wonderful little man!
