GRAND NATIONAL WINNERS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18148, 11 August 1924, Page 9

GRAND NATIONAL WINNERS.

of them all - » "■» m ""' l ' : ' (By Wayfarer.) y*" 8/0 mSy ° f ° B -° ld ft -memories span the hair >s* & a little more, mistrusting <<St 2L Dick Whittington and his Ti6}on ° f William r *•«* ° n in tnc secon ' l . Sis beneficent rule, would to »<>° of the National Steeple- ' Sjin to be thrice Lord Mayor of hr even Prime Minister ot - nt Imperial Conferences anu £&V«"r <* " il. «»«; ; hare quickened our sense ot : irttaW cnlarged ° Ur }loriZ°ncurbed onr youthful ardour ißbdaed our vaunting ambition, y* titers remains with us still an rtiber of the old flame, born of the big. and open spaces at Biccarton, dud ii kindled afresh each year as Lert etftofa rotmd with a faint flavJrfwttfnißg spring and a crowd of .rkiltrstintf recollections. It was on of the, annual recurtie "National" fc?er, a week „ t*® back, that I wrote to half a friend*, who I thought might W able to tell ®e something about the Hg riee 1 did not knotr already, and gri myself away to the southern out- . of thi Empire to renew my ac- - jjiiaKmee with George Hope, thriee ti»e winner of the jumping jugM SibW' seemed to meal , the person most likely to '""'girt me an unbiased opinion as to the ' fttotive importance of Dick Whitting- ,, fea'attg limielf. My quest, frankly, w i little disappointing. It involvjd j delightful journey of some 1200 - there sad back, by boat and rail *iU aotor, and the acceptance of pen"KMi by the way sufficient ' io warm the, heart of a man for half, a lifetime; bnt Hope, while talking egwly of the virtues and qualities of His oße-horse lov£, Mutiny, "the of all National winners, as hj« stoutly maintained, obviously un.'pftptrtd to brook any challenge, had , Estilsg to say of other horses that hi time and gone. They were but - is tlit fame of the' picture in which * Xtfiaj, ypi enshrined. JL Van and His Horse. - - ■ . ' ' ■ ■ ASldlUl'ths.way of a man with the toft ititottS) and Hope had good rea-fe-ilQving -Mutiny. Ho was a rather than a brilliant •'With his every faculty . upon his own mount, -ho Sjpihß4ohave been curiously unob.Nsiifa{irkt his opponents Were do4i^®^ 3 eottwe, 110 criticism of this have been permitted in of hi» success, and there stress the point now i n i frefldrd -over the T:l • ' He rode in the Grand • second twice'. ' another of the bred by Jthc 2. Douglas, in 1893, and in 1895 and <1896. Water- . home by Norton, Wo,.cs*inj!f' the winner 321b, was doseti lengths, with hia first attempt over a, further dozen lengths li theothfer place." Magpie, rid- ' jettylVee Holmes, who is now devottalents chiefly to training Ui'ddtiajfirottars, iras the only other of'-the thirteen starters to comsßt9 tK course In 1895 Mutifiy, among the half dozen Norton in. 1894, carried list Winning easily from , 111b, sad Norton, 13st, '_sn? sHfe I following year, with 12st wGOfiiliack, won again easily, from JfljL afii Booties, lOst 111b. tad W. OlaTke have the v of wins to their credit •JiJ&Je.Jm-OMnpiieil, Lyford having Wt in 1884, on FaughAnd on Daddy LongWhile Clarke won on Ahua in 1892, and ; bat tho record of riders, hwtwtaen as well as very ean 130 awa7^ an >* that of their l?ss ve'rpr -w -tta&Mto »SA Bport. f4ot, Hope, having placed upon his too solid circumstances Bur-Jtwa-eeeonde, might claim r'notable record of the knew perfectly Jeproaches for the * lyrbmpted the arrangeHope was up on NorJr* "usdon was to sheprJralre Ahua, home, and how admirably the "The hsrdtode," was Hope's *hen I reminded him other day. Then <rf 1897, when hig load of 12st * aeck by Levanter in fault, my fault Hope reminiscent'than I can inp ' little chap went hadn't the -T.' &ad ifc was on] y when «6vantor coming round .Va that I thought there'd «« w, , 836 ' who was riding 1 occasion, OMyiry for hia impreaconfirms this story. W he writes, *«y Jittla about Mutiny ™if»r ,Ca< !r' i ß^e °f getting over beautiful hind acA good view, mostk the National you gall °P i ?S awa >' saving up a n? _ ®f getting seca ®> a marvoll °us little we haven't ' Hope, it to say, regards 'i.. tsteeplechaser ' a in this Bugg eß t Tho Norton, Mas- • Comes to your -i? ®o°rge simply tolerance, S? 1 ® £ lty ' and So much ,in Mutiny's faithful chap" Loft come

that I took my courage in both hands one day iast wc-ck. and appealed to Dr. Lcalhani, of Xew Plymouth, the discoverer of the yood little horse, to jot down the veritable facts, and send them to me by return post. A mutual friend had encouraged me to write in this way, and the fruit of niv presumption is a delightful letter lying before me now. "In the good old days before the motor-car too;-: possession of the roads and when, in-indc-ed, there were many fewer roads about here to possess," writes the good doctor, after explaining that I had left him no time for reference to records, "'I had use for ninny horses in a scattered country practice, and early in my career came to realise that a. horse with a bit of blood in his veins cost no more to keep and served me and my patients much better than did one of a commoner sort. I was always looking out for the best my purse could afford, and one day I saw in the 'Weekly Press' a statement to the effect that in the Hawke's Bay district there were plenty of thoroughbreds running practically wild on some of the big stations. It occurred to me that I might make use of Borne of the blood that was going to waste in this way, and that night I wrote to the late Mr William Douglas, of Te Alahunga, asking it' he had r* pair of well-bred ones, perhaps not quite up to racing form, that would be useful for hack and harness work. Mr Douglas replied offering me a pair by Mute, a sire imported from Australia ten or twelve years before, for £GO. This was a lot of money to pay for station horses in those days, and I asked a friend living in Ha stings to have .1 look at the pair, and if Mr Douglas would agree to separate them, to send me the one he liked best. By next train, as near as might be, came along No. 3, Appin, and I was ])leasod enough with his appearance. I hacked him about, "and filled him up with oats, and at the end of the year ran him in a Hurry Scurry at the Bell Block Meeting. Ho finished second, being beaten by a chestnut gelding owned by Mr J. J. Russell, and I was so well satisfied with his performance that I wrote to Mr Douglas saying that if the other one of the pair was unsold I would be glad to have him on the former terms." Fresh From the Wilds. "In a few days," Dr. Leatham continues, "Mutiny, as I afterwards named him, put in an appearance by rail. And a pretty, object ho looked. Hide-bound, all over bot eggs, tail matted with fern, lower lip hanging down liko a door-mat, he presented a picture of abject dejection. But he was mine, and .he had the blood. So T, set about getting him into condition, cleaned lihn and fed him and hacked him about. Even .at that early stage he could not be touched with whip or spur, and he became so quiet with all of us that one day wo put him alongside an old staid buggy horse, and he went off on a twentymile trip as if he had been at the business all his days. A little later on, when riding him along the road one afternoon, I met the late J. J. Russell, a fine horseman, well remembered along the West Coast, and 'Old J.,' as we called him out of affection, after looking Mutiny over and seeing him move, suggested wo should turn into a paddock close by and give him a 'pop' over some of the gorse fences lying handy. I was by no means averse to the suggestion, and after 'old J.' had put him over half a dozen fences he had quite made up his mind about the little fellow and brought him back to mo. 'lf he's got any. pace, he's a clinker,* he said in his decisive way. 'You just feed him up a bit, and when you've got a bit of condition on him, give him some regular light work. Then we'll see what's what.' I followed these curt directions for several months,

/■nd then.gave Mutiny, a flutter ovgr six iurlongs, which encouraged ub to hope he was on the way to becoming a 'clinker.' Before he was put into regular training he was doing light hack and harness work, and eating everything we could - give him. This was before the general introduction of telephones, and he was used as a messenger boy'B hack, one of his regular jobs being tb bring up tho milk every night and morning in a can fastened to one of the 'D's' on the saddle. This probably is the origin of the story that lie served his time in a milk cart."

Coming Into His Own. The Doctor's account of Mutiny's early racing on the flat is fragmentary, as it only could be in a letter written in kindly haste on tho appeal of a distressed journalist. Ho tells how the little horse signalled his first appearance in public by winning, the Maiden Plate and the Clifton Handicap, worth forty' sovereigns between them, at the Waitara Jockey, Club's Meeting on December 15th, 1892—we must be precise about the beginning of .such a career as Mutiny's—and how he afterwards woe in tho same season the Flying Handicap, th> Opua . Handicap, and the Forced Handicap, all easily, on the one day at Opunako, the Stratford Cup at Stratford, the Hack Handicap at Egmont, the Pungarehu Handicap and the Final Handicap at Pungarehu, and, to crown all in his first season, the .Great Northern Hurdles, then styled the Grand National Hurdles, at Auck-, land. Before going up to Auckland he had taken part in. the Winter Oats Handicap at the Wanganui Winter Meeting, and finished third t to the atrociouslynamed grey gelding' Musket and Kapua. Dr. Leatham makes more than passing mention of this,stage in the little fellow's progress towards the top of the tree. "By the time his weight got above nine stone," he writes, "Percy Johnson, now the well-known Taranaki trainer, was riding him, and right well ho did for me and for my horse. Percy was most anxious to let Mutiny go for the Great Northern Hurdles, declaring that if he stood up he would be bound .to win; but I was keen on the Winter Oats and thinking of, the following year for the big event at Auckland. However, in the end we both got our way, Percy conceding that a race at Wanganui would do him no harm for the Hurdles. So after tho Winter Oats Percy gave him a few jumps over gorse, very few, in Mr Watson's paddock, and a 'brush up' with the one-eyed Despised (then under tlio care of 'Old J.'), who went up to Auckland and won the Great Northern Steeplechase, paying almost a three-figure dividend on the outside machine. . Mutiny cleared right away from Despised, and it still is my firm conviction that, had he been entered for the steeplechase as well aa for the hurdles, he would have annexed the double. As it was, with Percy Johnson in the saddle riding 41b overweight, he simply romped away from the rest of the field in the hurdles; and then, Mr Douglas wanting him back at any price, I sold him for £250, and thought I had made a good bargain." Tho tributes the doctor pays to the horse and to hia aiders and abettors in his preparation are from the heart of the good sportsman that has tasted the joys of true comradeship. Mutiny's Boy. While at Trentham during the weekend, shaking the dust of politics from my feet and basking in the sunshine which bathes the Hutt Valley, when the wind is neither from tho north nor from the south, and the sky is clear in both the east and the west, I fell in with J. McLaughlin, now a past master of the trainer's art, who can talk of Mutiny as eloquently as Dr. Leatham can write of him. McLaughlin, to his intimate friends known as "Paddy," to distinguish him, I understand, from the less favoured bearers of his surname who are not lineal descendants of the Irish. Kings, in the daya

of his youth was with Dr. Lentham, and rode the budding National winner at work and in one or two of his races on the flat. He remembers two Mutinvs. one the unkempt brumby frcm the wilds of Hawke's Bay, and' the other the racecourse idol of the nineties, and he retains a warm affection for them both The first made the pathetic, appeal of undisciplined genius, and the other carried the conviction of superlative achievement. Even in condition the latter, McLaughlin remembers with me. was a narrow lath of a hr.rsc, but he had the most beautiful of shoulders and any amount of driving power behind. Probably he would have measured II hands 3 inches, but an inch or more of this would have been due to an abnormally high wither, an admirable trait in a jumper, though one that prevented him from passing as a pony. Speaking ot his wonderful stamina, McLaughlin harked back to his triple win at Opunake, mentioned by Dr. Leatham. He had won the Flying Handicap and ihu Opua Handicap, a tolerably good ■day's work in such conditions as prevailed at that period in racing's evolution, and was well on his way home when a messenger was despatched afte: him in hot haste to crder his return to take part in the Forced Handicap. He was trotted back to the course, hurriedly saddled, and cantered out to join the waiting field. Getting away smartly, as was his wont, he kept with his field till reaching the distance,- where he went to the front, and going on again won comfortably. Then he resumed his long journey home. Last Words. Much more might be said about Mutiny. My friend'? have been generous beyond all bounds in their response to my S.O.S. signal, and my table is strewn with material enough to fill a good-sized book, which would be nothing more than our hero's due. A few words must suffice to close this story. Mutiny's trip to Australia in 1804, in company with Waterbury, and in charge of Hope and S.' Fergus, was not the brightest episode in his career. The sea trip was a much more formidable undertaking than it is to-day, and the conditions oil the other side were less favourable. The two New Zealnnders made their first attempt abroad, too early after their arrival, in a steeplechase at the Australian Jockey Club's Winter Meeting, Hope riding Waterbury and Fergus riding Mutiny, and they both fell. Waterbury was put out of action for some time, but Mutiny took part in the Victorian Grand National Steeplechase, in which he finished fifth in a big field. He then-returned to Sydney, and after registering a success in a minor hurdle race, won both the First and the Second Steeplechase *at the Australian Jockey Club's Spring Meeting, Fergus riding him in the former and Hope in the later. The mighty Helios, then the "top-notcher' among Australian steeplechasers, took part in both events, finishing second to Mutiny in the first, conceding 231b to the New Zealander, and being unplaced in the second, conceding 181b. Mutiny had given the Australians only a taste of 'his quality. The little fellow then returned to New Zealand to place the seal on his fame over the Biccarton country, and to earn a place among the elect of great steeplechasers. At the ripe old age of thirty-two., tenderly eared for to the last, he passed on. Where such good horses go to we do not know, though it is easy to dogmatise aboul the matter. To doubt is not irreverent. As it is a poor heart that never rejoices, eo it is a dull soul that finds no affinity in a dumb creaturo it loves.