RIDING AT S1XTEEN

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 43, 6 March 1937, Page 14

RIDING AT S1XTEEN

yOUTHFUL BRUCE HOBBS TEN W1NNERS IN FIRST YEAR MEMORIES OF THE FAST. A mere youth has become the sensation of the National Hunt Racing in England this season. BruCe Hobbs, son of a prominent trainer, is believed to have created a record by riding ten wiiiners ih his first year — before he was sixteen years old — and he is claimed the greatest find in a quarter of a century. 0 Bruce started the season as an amateur, but on his 16th birthday, late in December, he received his professionai ticket, and in some quarters has been discussed a possible rider for the champion Golden Miller in the next Grand National Steeple ,at Aintree. Young Hobbs won his first race as a professionai. He had the mount on Baccharis in the Handicap Hurdle at Woylverlxampton, and as the London Sporting Life stated: "Hobbs rode like a real workman, and one veteran racegoer likened him to Jack Anthony when the latter started riding as an amateur at about the same age. "As if to show that all sorts of rides eome alike to him, Hobbs followed up the succe^s on the 100 to 8 chance by riding the favourite Eliza to victory in the Open Three-year-old Hurdle." Started Young. Hobbs' . remarkable success has caused some delVing into the recotds of other young riders of past years, and "Augur," in ihe Sporting Life, has dealt extertsively with promittent jockeys who started in their early 't66ns« Of riders with whom present-day racegoers are familiar, several started at an early age, but none did what Hobbs has done. Jack Fawcus was riding at the age of 16; F. B. Rees began to attract attention before he was 17;, and his brother "Billy" was a successfui point-to-point rider at 14. Jack Anthony rode his first steeplechase winner at 16, and Frank Hartigan was apprenticed to Garrett Moore at 13, and had occasional rides. Frank Wootton did not ride his first winner over hurdles until he was 27 years of age. Great Records. Probably the palm for youthfulness in the saadle goes to the brothers Woodland , three of whom rode at the age of 12 and 13. Percy has records in other respects, also having riddfn winners of the Grand National" and the French Derby, as well as having driven racing cars at a hundred miles an hour. Percy Woodland, who has passed the 50 mark, has been aptly described as the "Peter Pan" of racing. His elder brother, Dick, hoids the record as the youngest jockey who ever rode in the Grand National, for he was 14 when he finished fourth on Magpie. When he won his first steeplechase, Percy carried six stone deadweight, and it is recorded that he had to make no fewer than three trips before he could bring all his impedimenta to scale! As a Schoolboy. A rormer jockey, still a young man and well-known, who started his career in the saddle very early, is 'Bill" Payne. - He made his first appearance as a. jockey when only 14 years old, and when he was still a schoolboy. His first mount was Lord Suirdale's South Lodge, in an amateur's 'chase at Gatwick in 1925. He could only ride or get practice while on holiday, and did not become a regular until after his sixteenth birthday. He was a good all-rounder as a boy, being captain of his school and captain of the cricket, Rugby . and soccer teams. He was still at school when he won his first race under National Hunt rules, that being in an amateur riders' hurdle on his father's horse, Noctifer. He had then just passed his flfteenth year.