A Jockey Whose Comfort Was Prayer

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 217, 20 August 1943, Page 8

A Jockey Whose Comfort Was Prayer

OW many of those who followed Grand National events the other day on the air remembered an Eng§lish jockey who rode winners in 1749 races and has now, 57 years later, had his record beaten in America? Here are penpictures from an English magazine of two of the most famous riders in the history of racing.

REDERICK JAMES ARCHER was a tall, rangy boy, long-legged and loose-limbed, He was a little heavy for the job, but he captured and held the elegant eyes that watched him in that fabulous era which belonged to Queen Victoria and was ‘polished by the manners of Disraeli and the perfectionists of the art of living who graced the times. He captured the era, first as just a boy-a picturesque ‘little figure, sitting there easily and gracefully on _ his mounts. It was an era in, which proficiency, prowess, and victory were essentials. And Fred Archer not only rode beauti-fully-and according to the aesthetics of riding which every horse-lover knows -he also won. His first winner was chalked up when he was 13. Before he had begun to shave his lean, sensitive cheeks, he was at the top. On the skill of "his~thin, sinewy hands depended the ownership of many golden guineas. Over the green turf of England, before the glittering Society which made almost a fetish out of The Season, Archer thundered into a series of victories which made sporting history. He reached his peak in 1885 when he rode the incredible number of 246 winners. He was at the top of his form, and the top of his profession. He was a careful man with his money, a family man. He had married a beautiful young girl, and the next year they were expecting a child. But his wife died in 1886, leaving him his only child, a girl. Given, as all men of the time, to elaborate Victorian rhetoric, and its noble sentimentality, Archer explained to his American friend, William Easton: "I have been luckier in riding than some of the other lads. That’s about all the patting on the back I gave myself. But what does it amount to now? It’s nothing, absolutely nothing. Poor Nellie! She was the only thing, really, that made any difference to»me. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) | "Do you know, Bill, my only consola-| tion now? It may seem strange. I don’t mind telling you. It’s prayer. I kneel and pray every night, and it’s the only comfort I have." The surges of success no longer held their thrills; nor did the gentle cries of admiration from the full-skirted women, nor any of the adulation of the nation. And so, at Newmarket one day in 1886, the gun that barked in a little room close to the track did not signal another winner for Fred Archer. Attacked by typhoid fever, he shot himself, leaving behind an incredible record of 2749 winning rides. The Record Is Broken This in itself was legend, but tragedy always enhances legend, and for more than half a century Fred Archer was the. greatest legend of the Turf. He still is. But recently 30,000 howling sportsmen in Kentucky watched a short, tough, hard-riding little jockey bring James Voase Rank’s Scotch Mist across the line to win the Cannon Yard Stakesand to give miner’s son Gordon Richards, now 36, the record of having beaten Archer’s 57-year-old record for total wins. Gordon Richards is known to British racing as a good fellow, sincere, and not over-ambitious. It made very little difference to him that he had broken the record; he pointed out that it took him six or more seasons than it took Archer,