THE GRIM ARCHER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19668, 9 December 1933, Page 7

THE GRIM ARCHER

MAGNIFICENT JOCKEY DETERMINED TO WIN Late in the evening of May 29, 1927, two frightened women returned to their home in Newmarket. They talked about a tall thin man on a pale grey horse who came upon them suddenly round the corner of the Hamilton Stud Road, writes Mervyn Hall in the “Daily Mail.” The Newmarket folk nodded their heads wisely. “They do say Fred Archer rides Hamilton Stud Road of nights still.” said someone. “They say rightly,” maintained the elder of the women. "X knew' Fred Archer well alive, and it was he I saw to-night—it must be thirty years since I saw' him in the flesh but I shall remember him as long as ever I live.” If it is true that the poor restless rider is still chained to the earth we live on he must know how the people are talking of him to-day, totting up the figures of his bygones records and setting them by the side of Gordon Richards's steadily mounting totals. What a race it is between the classic wunners! They say of Fred Archer that he was found, as a boy, in tears because he could not ride both winning donkeys in a dead-heat. It would be like him to want to be Gordon

Richards and Fred Archer both together. He came of a line of racing jockeys. His grandfather William let out horses in the Cheltenham of King George’s golden days, when yellow curricles and spidery Stanhope gigs used to go bowling along the stucco curves of its terraces. The name Archer was always coming up in sporting gossip from the days of Nimrod to the days of Surtees. From the Kingls Arms. His father, who when he retired used to keel) the King's Arms at Prestburv, saw “Old Q." drive up in such a saf-fron-coloured coach and four that the villagers all took him for the Prince of Wales. Here Fred Archer, who was born in Cheltenham on January 11, 1857, passed his childhood, gaped at the pictures of classic winners which his father cut out of “Bell’s Life,” and rode his first race (unsuccessfully) on a pony against a donkey on the green. From Prestburv he went in 1868 to the training stables at Heath House, Newmarket. It was a model and a moral establishment; but he was abysmally miserable. Fred was homesick, and the other boys bullied him. It is a polite fiction of English Society that a sportsman is blissfully happy in any society of English boys. In fact, Fred Archer at Heath House was as abysmally unhappy as Nimrod

was at Rugby. But once mounted nothing frightened him at all. To the end of his life he took risks which set other jockeys gasping. His particular brand of courage showed itself also in other smaller things. Once he separated a bull terrier from a bulldog before an admiring but fearful circle in an inn yard. Yet he w 7 as always nervous and highly strung. He hated to be left alone in the dark. In 1872 Fred Archer won his first big race. Weighed in at the minimum impost of 5.7. he rode a colt called Salvanos to victory in the Cesarewitch. He was 15 years old. From that date till his death in 1886 he had a four-teen-years run of continued glory, each year adding to his record of wins as it went by. “The Tinman.” In those fourteen years he won every race of imi>ortance except the Cambridgeshire ar.d the Ascot Gold Cup. So resolutely did he ride his races that among his enthusiastic supporters he was known as “the Tinman” —which meant that he always went for the “tin.” In one season he rode as many as 246 winners, and over the fourteen years of his active life he struck an average of two wins out of every five races. In 17 seasons he rode more than 2700 winners. Five Derbys and two St. Legers stood to his credit. When he won the Derby on Bend Or he rode with a disabled right arm. This injury, caused by a horse which “savaged” him above the elbow, kept him long out of the saddle and interrupted his astonishing sequence of victories.

His peculiar qualities were a genius for taking risks and an inspiration for understanding his mount. He could size up the idiosyncracies of a horse almost immediately. As one of his patrons put it. “Fred Archer knows all there is to know about a horse after riding it once.” Having grasped the knowledge, he was not too gentle to a horse's defects. If It would not go at once he forced before he coaxed. He was not sparing with whip or spur. Could Not Lose. He never seemed to care what happened to a horse after he had ridden it to victory. It was always his weakness that he could not bear being beaten. “You look put out,” said a friend after he had failed to win the Cambridgeshire on St. Mirim in 1886, \ the last year of his life. One can hardly blame him. He was banking on victory to make good a loss of £30.000 suffered that year. And three pieces of dried toast and two half- bottles of champagne in 24 hours are not the best sustenance for a man in the state that he was. Not long after, in a party at the Albion Hotel, Brighton, his friends commented on his depression. For a fortnight he had been riding losers, and he could not stand it. “Well, I’ll bet you £IOO you win every race you ride in to-day,” said one of the party. That cheered him up. In fact, he rode three winners and lost his £IOO. But it was only a flash in the pan. Black depression swallowed him up again—he got a chill. then typhus. Brooding over a bad patch had weakened him. but Lord Alington came near the truth when he wrote. “No man can live on two oysters, one prawn, three doses of physic, and three Turkish baths a day.” Actually his extravagant efforts to hi Bst. 71b were too much for a man of his outstanding height, especially when added to the nervous energy that the shattered framework had to hold. On Monday. November 9. 1886. at 2 o’clock in the afternoon he crawled out of bed. took a revolver from a drawer, and holding his sister with his free hand, fired it into his own body before she could stop him. Farewell, best jockey seen upon a course. Your backers weep to hear by fate’s decree That t lie pale rider on his great white horse Hath beaten thee.