STORIES OF RACING RASCALITY.

Hastings Standard, Volume XIII, Issue 4310, 13 November 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

STORIES OF RACING RASCALITY.

There -would soem to be no limit to the ingenuity some men display in thinking out tricks of roguery where , horses are concerned ._ A famous retire's jockey, who has m his day won the Derby, the Oaks, and the St. Leger, and who now lives near Middleham, in Yorkshire, lately gave the writer instances of what he called the "thievish tricks" that had come within his own knowledge. DOCTORING A SADDLE. Perhaps the nu.-t rascally of these j was the "doctoring" of a saddle with quicklime. Unbeknown to the owner of the hors? or the jockey, a quantity of quicklime was placed between the padding of a saddle and the thin outer lining that presses on to the horse's back, obviously with the intention of making tho horse buck or run out of j the course, or crash into a fence —the | race in which he ran was a steeple- j chase—-when his sweat f-hould net the 1 liine and make it bum. But the ruse i failed, for though the animal was se- j verely 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 b~en removed from the saddle .—by the animal's owner, as the rider correctly guesred—in order that when the rider csmo 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 in was a 71b. saddle. He had ridden over to the racecourse from a house at which he was staving on a hunter that carried a 1 lib. 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 elumn of trees, behind which tlio racehor=es had to pass on the way to the starting-post and to wait there with the hunte- ungirthed. Then, as a few minutes later he r-.-de behind these trees on his way to the «t.irtingpost. he leaped off his horse, changed saddles with the hunter, and was on again in a moment and continuing his way to the post as though nothing had happened. It waa fortunate that he should have done this, for on weighing in, atter winning the race, he just turned tho scale, ill spite of the heavy hunting-saddle. Tho owner of the animal, who had arranged to win over another hor«e, and to intended that his own animal, who was favourite .-h >i:M be disqualified, in consequence i< t>t a large sum of money. STOPPED BY A BUGLE!

The next '"incident" related to the writer by this retired Yorkshire jockey had to do with a military charger who

was winidng a race by about a length, when the owner of the second horse ordered a trumpeter t"> sound the call whi-ch means •'Halt!"' Tho winning

horso at once '.shut up.'" and the race was awarded to "a civilian animal that -didn't know- a bogle from a bandstand!" Out iti India the jockey witnessed several "ramps" -of one sort and another to do with hor-r-s. 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 certain steep and narrow defile in a time- The r ar f " -!. and b_oio long the riders found the defile blocked by a flock of #.heep being driven up it. A few hundred yards farther the- dofila was blocked by a second flock of sheep; little farther on by a flock of goats; a little farther etill by a great herd of pig*«, and so on, until by the time the horses had made their way through tho various obstructions the time had expired and the challenger had '.von his wager. .Though nolx>dy ever proved that the ■challenger had arranged f•.r the variuos flocks to bo driven i;p the defil? at the time tho -race was being run, everybody knew that lie had done so.