RACING RASCALITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 838, 12 May 1910, Page 4

RACING RASCALITY.

REMINISCENCES OF A RETIRED JOCKEY. There would seem to he no limit to the ingenuity some men display in thinking out tricks of roguery where horses are concerned. A famous retired English jockey, who has in his day won the Derby, the Oats, and the St. Leger, and who now lives near Middleham, in Yorkshire, lately gave an interviewer instances of what is called the “ thievish tricks ” that had come within his own knowledge. Perhaps the most rascally of these was the doctoring of a saddle with quicklime. Unknown to tUe owner of the horse or jockey, a quantity of quicklime was placed between the padding of the saddle and the thin outer lining that presses on to the horse’s back, obviously with the intention of making the horse buck, or run out of the course, or crash into a fence —the race in which he ran was a steeplechase—when his sweat would wet the lime and make it burn. But the ruse failed, for although the animal was severely burned, and though the agony did make him bolt, he took all his fences and won. Many weeks elapsed, however, before it was possible again to put a saddle on his back. On another occasion a wellknown gentleman rider discovered just as he was mounting a friend’s horse that he had engaged to ride, that some of the shot had been removed from the saddle —by the animal’s owner, as the rider correctly guessed—in order that when the rider came to weigh in after the race he should not draw the scale, and so would be disqualified. What should he do? The saddle he was seated on was a ylb one. He had ridden over to the racecourse from a house at which he was staying on a hunter that carried a iqlb saddle. The animal was in the paddock, and still saddled. Signalling the groom to come to him, he hurriedly ordered him, in a whisper, to ride the hunter over to the farther side of a clump of trees, behind which the racehorses had to pass on the way to the starting post, and to wait there with the hunter uugirthed. Then, as a few minutes later he rode behind these trees on his way to the starting post, he leaped off his horse, changed saddles with the hunter, and was on in a moment, and continuing his way to the post as though nothing had happened. It was fortunate that he should have done this, for, on weighing in, after winning the race, he only just turned the scale, in spite of the heavy hunting saddle- The owner of the animal, who had arranged to win over another horse, and so intended that his own animal, which was should be disqualified, conse. quence lost a large sum ot money.