FACTS ABOUT FAMOUS TURF GAMBLERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 178, 18 July 1908, Page 4

FACTS ABOUT FAMOUS TURF GAMBLERS.

A LANCASHIRE WEAVER WHO WON £45,000. announcement that Mr ,1 w Gates-the wealthy American Turf plunger known as ■• liet-allillwn Gates" —is about to pay the English Turf r, visit has created tremendous interest m sporting circles. His intention is to wage a heavy betting war against the biggest bookmakers in this country He 13 a liorn gambler with an iron nerve and bets in thousands of pounds as if it were so many cherries. These |,j., plungers, however, invariably come to f™ f ' n the lon S run - Bllu 'ui'k and the •bookies-' conspire to beat them. Ihe latter hx the odds tliev bet. and it tt the short prices laid by them that defeat the heavy gamblers. There comes a time in the career of every racing man when he is tempted to plunge heavily on a, presumed certainty about which long odds on have to be laid. Ascot, for instance, is notorious for the upsetting of "odds-on" favourites, and u\anv an aristocrat has lost heavily through '-dashing it down'' on one of these false -good things." On these occasions' it seems like robbing the bookmakers to back the horse, such a certainty docs it appear-on paper. But the "bookies" smilingly accept the long odds laid on the animal's chance, and in a great manv cases they kugh loudly when the race is over and the "good thing" well beaten. Then it is that ghastly white faces may be seen in the rings and on the coaches. 'They are those of the plungers who have gambled heavily and lost thousands of pounds they will have the greatest difficulty in paying. A few years ago there was a. horse called Black Arrow running in a race at Goodwood. He had only two competitors to beat. The King's jockey rode him, and such a positive certainty did the race appear to be for him that backers had to bet odds of 100 to 7 on lis winning— that is to say tlrcy had to risk £IOO to win £7. , Scores of little punters betted the "bookies" £SOO to £35 that he won. The horses cantered to the startingpost, the tapes went up. and to the undisguised horror of the plungers the badtempered Black Arrow instantly whipped round and never ran a yard in the race. The plungers, of course, lost their money—some of them many thousands of pounds—and lots of little backers were ruined through their asinine folly of gambling heavily on a presumed certainty. ' '

Not a tithe of the betting takes placn on the Turf nowadays that existed in what is known as the "Hastings era.'' The plunging which took place on Hermit's Derby has never been equalled in the annals of the race. The Marques* of Hastings, lost over £100,900 and Lord Stamford almost as much. Sir Joseph Hawley lost over £50,01)0 in one bet through backing his horse, The Palmer, against Hermit for that amount with the owner of the latter. When Hermit was knocked down to Mr. Chaplin as a yearling "at the Elthain Stud auction for 1,000 guineas, Mr. C. .1. Merry bought the very next lot led into the sale-ring for a similar sum. This horse lie christened Marksman. He backed his purchase against that of Mr. Chaplin with that gentleman.for £IO,OOO in the "Blue Ribbon " of 1807, and he lost his wager by the. narrow margin of a neck. As proof of the paucity of presentday betting it may be mentioned thai, when the owner of the Lincolnshire •Handicap winner of 1908, 01>. won a bet of £IO,OOO to £SOO, it. was extensively chronicled as a very notable bet. oi> again won the same race the following year, strange to relate, and his' French owner's sole wager was £IO.OOO to £4OO. ' ; • I

It is by laying odds on a horse' that plunging backers usually come to grief, as these "dead certainties "have an micomfortable knack of getting beaten bv some despised outsider that, in Turf parlance'"drops from the clouds." One has only to go baek as far as the last Derby, won by Orby, for a striking instance, of this. The majority of expert racegoers thought the favourite, Slicve Gallion, a cast-iron certainty for the race, and betted accordingly. Among them was a well-known aristocrat who in one bet alone which he made lost a small fortune, as he laid the odds on the favourite to lose £6,000. Then came the turn of Orby to go down as an uddson chance. There were four runners in a race worth £1.721, and the Derby winner, upon which people plunged, was last.

During the .tiding career of the famous jockey, Fred Archer, there was a man who used to sell penny packets of cough-drops and similar confectionery at the raee-mectiugs. In each of these packets was a slip of paper, on which were written' tips for the afteruoon's races. This man gave lots of winners and did a roaring trade. He blindly put all his takings on the mounts of Archer, who was then at his ascnith. He was marvellously successful] in his investments, and the more he won the more he put on. In fact he, ill Turf phraseology, pluckily '.' played up his winnings" until he was haviug thousands of pounds on individual mounts of " The Tinman " 1 as the great jockey was known. He became a rich man, but, not satisfied with the fortune he had acquired from so I, small a beginning, he continued to plunge ' until he found himself, after a long sequence of bad luck, " stone-broke," and at the bottom of the ladder agaih.

A working Lancashire went for a day's holiday to Stockton-on-Tees races some years ago, 'and his capital consisted' of £2 ss. His luck was dead-in that day, and he ran his meagre bank into nearly £SOO. He decided to give up weaving for a time and follow the race-meetings. His marvellous luck continued, and as he was a plucky gambler, he "played up his winnings,"-with the result that within three weeks he had £45,000 to his credit at his bankers. He wisely settled £20,000 on his wife and kept'the rest to play with. One of the; most extraordinary plnngersfeever known was "the .TnbiUe. Plunger, who in a little over twelve months I —Jubilee year—managed to lose in reck- ! less betting, on the Turf and in other sporting pursuits, such as pigenn-slmo:.-ing and billiards, a quarter of a million sterling., The famous Turf dictator. Lord George iSentinck, was a big gambler on horses, and he backed Gaper for the Derby to win him the enormous sum of £ISO,(HKI, but the winner turned up in Coiherstone.

A, prize-fighter named John flnlly, bom and bred in very humble eireum-' stances, was so successful in, his Turf operations, book-making ami backing horses, that he became M.l'. fur Pontefraet and owned Derby winners and collieries. His horse Margrave won the St. l/eger and £80,11(10 in bets for him. llhad a very big gamble on the race. He won another fortune of taO.ooo when his partner's horse, St. <>iles. carried off the Derby. When his own horses. Pyrrlius the First and Audover. won th ? Kpsom classic he, on both occasions, netted a very large sum of money. He was one of the most consistent plunges ever known on the Turf. He was married twice and liadi twenty-four children. Sir Eobert Peel said of hiin. "He was the only member who literally fought lis way into Parliament."

i Although enormous suras have been i« won by plunging owners upon such big betting handicaps as the (Vsarewitch ■ and Cambridgeshire, and other import- ' ant rare* of a similar description, it is ; probable that the heaviest gambling h,\s taken place over the Derby. On the ' Monday following the success of Mr. ' Merry's Thormanby the lucky owner ' spread on Iris drawing-room table no less : a sum than £IOII.OOO, his winnings, in

cheques, golil. and, note-*, fur his wi f o •to insjieet. On the occasion I hat Count la-Tange's Trench horse, filudiateur. won, his noble owner ilrew the nice sum of £70.000 from the bookmakers an.l very nearly repeated tin- dose when his champion a few months later romped awflv with the St. Le£er. When the American jockey. Tod Sloan, visited England, with extraordinary success, a few years ago he was followed by a pang of American " plunders.'' who hiindlv gambled on his mounts in huge sums,' and betted as if there were no settling (lav. One of them thought nothing of liaving t2o,nnn or more on ;i hot odds-on favourite that Sloan was riding. During one afternoon's racing at Newmarket he was a winner of nearly taOJKMI through following Sloans winjiin>' mounts in the first three races. The Yankee, jockey, however, rode litres losers in tin- latter part of the days sport, and the plunger actually finished up some thousands of pounds In the had. It is not often an owner of raw-horses complains that he is heartily sick of th.-i deadlv monotony of winning race-; ■ el this was the grievance some years ago of a famous Turfite named '; Teddy" r.ravley. ft was upon one of his horses. Mofnington. that the popular jockey. Tom Cannon, had just won a. lug ia.ee when lie received a telegram annomiein* the birth of a son. He Van with W. fl. firnce when he received the message, and it was upon the cricketing doctor s suggestion that the new arrival was chrkened Mornington. -Braylcys horses for quite a long period did nothing hut win race after rare, and he actually sat down' in Tattersall's rui;?

at one uf the principal race-meetings aud vowed he was sick of success,

Although he was so remarkably lucky on the Turf, then' came a day when Brayley couiil not will a rate, and this famous plunger died, as muiiy before him, iu comparative poverty. To bet at all is sheer folly; to plunge is rank madness and a certain road to ruin.