HORSE RACING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 175, 9 July 1932, Page 8 (Supplement)

HORSE RACING

SOME FAMOUS MATCHES IN ENGLAND. WOMEN JOCKEYS RODE IN HISTORIC EVENTS LONG AGO.

Commenting on the recent matching of two tow-year-olds owned by Lord Adare and Lord Rosebery for a race at Newmarket, a writer in a London paperpoints out that the matching of horses is as old as the history of England itself, and though the faithful Tacitus does not give names or dates, we know that the Ronian soldiery indulged in horse-races at Wetherby when they held York,

In 1377 Richard IL, when Prince of Wales, rode a match with the Earl of Arundel, and Charles 11. appears to have been an accomplished gem. >anjockey, for he won a plate in four Heats at Newmarket in 1671.

But it was in the 18th century and the first hair of the 19th that matches flourished, and volumes could be filled with accounts of the contests (some of them freakish) that took place. Those women who are winning so many races nowadays may regard themselves as pioneers, but in 1805, at York, Mrs Thornton rode a match against the great professional jockey of the day, Frank Buckte, and beat him, too. A strange figure Mrs Thornton must have looked, for she rode side-saddle “in purple jacket and cap, nankeen spirt, purple shoes, and embroidered stockings.” Mrs Thornton had a predecessor, the dashing Miss Pond of 1757. Miss Pond advertised that she would ride a horse 10(X) miles in 1000 hours at the Newmarket spring meeting for 200 gs. half forfeit. Legend says she did it. hut the austere compiler of the Rwin" Calendar entered no record of it One of the most celebrated ol >:l! makers of matches was Tregonw.- 1 ) Frampton, Keeper of the Running Horses to William TH.. Queen Anno. George I. and George IT., and known as the “Father of the Turf.” So the great game of matchmaking proceeded through the years, with the

horse matches in the morning and the cock matches in the evening (in 1756 at Huntingdon Lord Sandwich and Lord Stamford fought two Mains of 11 a side for lOOgs a battle and IOOOgs each odd battte) until 1851, when the fast of the great matches was run. That was at York, between Lord Eglinton’s The Flying Dutchman and Lord Zetland’s Volitigeur, horses which have left imperishable names in Turf history, when the former won. Again was all Yorkshire stirred to its depths, and on the Wolds and in the Dales they still tell stories of it, handed down from father to sqn.