SCHOOLBOY JOCKEYS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 7 January 1925, Page 7

SCHOOLBOY JOCKEYS

WHO HAVE MADE FORTUNES. Few people realise that most of England’s leading jockeys are either still in their teens or in the very early twenties, writes Cavendish Hope in the Daily Mail. They achieve fame as the riders of “classic” winners at an age when most other boys are hardly beginning to take their schooldays seriously, and, owing to the difficulty of keeping down weight, frequently retire with a small fortune to become trainers jef other mein’s horses and other men’s boys before they are thirty. Of the twelve leading jockeys this season up to the end of last week, nine are either still under twenty or well on the sunny side of twenty-five. The younger a jockey begins his professional tareer —according to Steve Donoghue—the better. His son Pat, who left school in July to follow in his famous father’s footsteps and rode his first winner for Eleanor Lady Torrington at the end of last week, will not be fourteen year s old until October. Father and son rode against each other in the first race which Pat rode as a professional jockey, and also last week when the son won his first race.

Another jockey w r lio frequently rides against his father is W. M’Lachlan jun. Although only about sixteen, he has been wonderfully successful this season in winning some of the biggest races, and is now sixth in the list of winning jockeys. In April he performed a feat only paralleled twice when he rode the winner of the Great Metropolitan at Epsom on the Tuesday and the winner of the City and Surburban next day. Smirke, who started off the present flat-racing season by riding eleven winners out of twelve days is now fifth in the list of winning jockeys—occupying one place below the veteran Steve Dionoghu© —is thlei seventeen-years-old son of a small business man in a London suburb. He began his career at fifteen and won a. race on his second public mount and thirty-nine others before the season was out.

“Tommy” Morgan, another very promising young light-weight jockey, the son of an Irish horse-dealer, probably holds the record of the youngest winner of a great race. He won the Great Metropolitan Stakes at Epsom on Viaduct in 1920 at the age of thirteen..

Elliott, who tied with Steve Donoghue for premier honours last year and is now head of the list of winning jockeys, is himself barely out of his ’teens, as are also “Vic” Smith, R. A. .Jones, “Tommy” Weston, and G. Richards, all of whom are among the first twelve winning jockeys of the present season.