MY FEELINGS WHEN RACING.

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 March 1911, Page 2

MY FEELINGS WHEN RACING.

Bernard dillon, thE famous JOCKEY; WHAT IT’S LIKE TO TRAVEL 39 MILES AN HOUR ON HORSEBACK. Within the past few months so much has been written about startling sensations experienced by aeroplanists during their flights, and so much has been heard of the great speed attained by flying ihatihines, that iliahy pgdjile are apt to forget that, although the racehorse cannot travel quite so fast as its mechanical rival,- yet, at the same time, a thoroughbred, specially trained for speed, actually travels at an average rate of no less than nearly thirtyfive miles an hour.

In order to learn what a jockey actually feels when riding a race, the winning or losing of Which may mfeall to the public thousands upon thousands of pounds, an English journalist asked Bernard Dillon, the famous jockey who rode Pretty Polly to victory on so many occasions and who steered this year’s Derby winner, Lemberg, first past the post, to give him a description of what a knight of the pigskin sees and feels when racing. RECOGNITION EASY.

“It is far from an easy matter to put one’s sensations into words,” said the famous horseman, “but there are various points I may he able to touch upon of which the general public know but little. “In the first place, despite the fact that, to strike a fair average, races are run at the rate of anything from thirtythree to thirty-five miles an hour —as a rule about Train. 47secs., or thereabouts, are taken to traverse a mile—those who have never thrown a leg across a thoroughbred in an actual race would be surprised did they know how clearly a jockey can recognise the sea of faces lining the rail. “Thus, on many occasions, as the horses have thundered past, I have been able to pick out a familiar countenance from hundreds of others. I merely mention this to clear up the prevalent idea that everything seems one distinct blur in a race. Such, believe me is not the case at all.

“Again, during the course of a race there are countless Avrinkles to he brought into play, of which the onlookers know nothing. A horse, perhaps, •may ‘sigh’ or falter at a moment when something else in the race seems to be going far more easily. That is the time to stop riding for a few strides in order to allow one’s mount to get a breath; then one pulls him together, and, maybe, he will prove equal to pulling out ‘a little bit extra, just when the opponent, who seemed to be going so smoothly but a few seconds ago, begins to ‘crack.’ This, however, is another of those happenings which only a jockey experiences. USING THE WHIP. “Again, a jockey is sometimes blamed for not taking up his whip sooner. And often how unfair is such criticism ! for, by not using his whip, he has probably got lengths nearer to winning than he would have done if he had used the flail like a butcher boy. A game horse like Spearmint, on whom I won the Derby four years ago, would always answer calls for ‘a bit extra’; but not so a rogue, and it is on this account that a jockey often sits and suffers, yes, literally suffers agony when, challenged on right and left, he feels that if he were to take out his whip his mount would drop out of the race in two strides.

“Horses, too, like human beings, do not always feel as fit as the proverbial fiddle, and in consequence run a race sluggishly.

“Pretty Polly, for instance, when I rode her in the Gold Cup at Ascot, was not the same mare that I had steered to victory in the spring a few weeks before. She ran without fire, without that dash and spirit which she almost, invariably showed. “By the way, 1 think in race-riding more than anything else, those who ‘pass remarks’ should remember that it is always easier to criticise ‘something’ than to actually do that ‘something,’ whatever it may be—in this case it is race-riding. “On innumerable occasions, I have heard statements made that such and such a horseman has ridden ‘a terribly bad race’—these remarks usually emanate from critics on the Stand. But how can a critic on the Stand really know? He sees the horses as they pass it, but it is a human impossibility for him to tell, as a jockey can frequently tell, what is passing in his mount’s mind. HUMOURING THE HORSES.

“A horse may be faint-hearted —may possess a touch of the ‘white-feather’ — he likes racing well enough so long as he can have things all his own way, but lie can’t ‘abear’ the game when he’s called upon to make an extra effort. “Let me give you a jockey’s sensations on a mount of this kind. At the distance, he and the horse underneath him are on the best of terms. ‘ Gallops home !’ cry the spectators—and at the moment the shout is raised there may be excellent reason for it. “But, suddenly, the seemingly com-ing-home-by-himself-racehorse throws up his head, round and round goes his tail, like the propeller of a flying-ma-chine, and in a hundredth part of the time it takes to tell it, that horse has, to all intents and purposes, dropped out of the fighting line. Why ? Well, simply and solely because fighting isn’t his game—he likes a walk over better than a stiff struggle. “It is in times such as these that the real art of jockeyship enters into raceriding. Often one intuitively feels that a horse will not ‘put it all in’ if called for an extra effort —feels it, mark you, before the rogue has actually thrown up the sponge. And it is on such occasions as these that critics on the Stand frequently jump to hasty conclusions, for, as I have said, many a time when told he has ridden a bad race, a jockey has, as a matter of fact, never ridden better.

“True,‘he* may have been beaten by a short head, but to get where tie did has called for the exercise of careful judgment and an amount of ‘kidding’ of which critics who have lost their money can know nothing.”