RACING RASCALITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 377, 30 April 1910, Page 9

RACING RASCALITY.

REMINISCENCES OF A RETIRED JOCKEY.

DOCTORING A SADDLE.

There would seem to be no limit to the ingenuity some men display in tiding out'tricks of roguery where horses are concerned. A famous retired English jockey, , has in his day won the Derby, the Oaks and the St. Leger, and who now lives near Middleham, in Yorkshire, lately „ave an interviewer instances of what is called the -thievish tricks that had come within his own pledge. Perhaps the most rascally ot these was the doctoring of a saddle with quicklime. UnKnown to the owner o the horse or the jockey a quantity ot quicklime was placed between the paddiner of the saddle and the turn outer lining that presses on to the horse's bacC obviously with the intention o making the horse buck, or run out of the course, or crash into a fence—tUe race in which he ran was a steeplechase—when his sweat would wet thn lime and make it burn. But the ruso failed, for though 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 well-known 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 71b one. He had ridden over to the racecourse from a house at which he was staying on a lunter that carried a 141b 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 ungirthed. Then, as a few minutes later he rode behind these trees on his way to the starting post, he leaped off his horse, changgd saddles with uie 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 tuped the scale, in spite of the heavy hunting saddle. The owner of the animal, who ihad arranged to win over another horse, and so intended that his own animal, which was favorite, should be disqualified, in consequence lost a large sum of money. , The next "incident" related to the interviewer by this retired Yorkshire jockey had to do with a military charger which was winning a race by about a length, when the owner of the second horse ordered a trumpeter to sound the call which meant "Halt." The winning horse at once "shut up," and the race ■was awarded to a "civilian animal that didn't know a bugle from a bandstand." Out in India the jockey witnessed several "ramps" of one sort and another to do with horses. One of these occurred in connection with a wager made by a man who declared that half a dozen horses could not be ridden down a steep and narrow defile in a given time. The race started, and before long the riders found the defile blocked by a flock of sheep being driven up to it. A few hundred yards farther on by a flocK of goats; a little farther still by a great herd of pigs; and so on, until, by the time the horses had made their way through the various obstructions, the time had expired and the challenger had •won his wager. Though nobody ever proved that the challenger had arranged for the various flocks to be driven up the defile at the time the race was being run, everybody knew that he had done so.