The Life of a Great Sportsman 



near perfection as could be, whilst, as I have previously stated, 

 his nerve was undeniable. 



Another habit of his, which certainly did not find favour 

 with the majority of steeplechase jockeys, was always to select 

 the biggest place in the fence to ride at ; whilst another 

 golden rule he adhered to religiously, especially at Aintree, was 

 to carefully go over the ground before the race. I don't believe 

 that there was an inch of the Grand National course that he 

 didn't know by heart, and I believe it was a fact that Colonel 

 Campbell, now commanding the 9th Lancers, who won the 

 race on The Soarer in 1896, attributed his success in no 

 small measure to a letter written some years previously by 

 Mr. Richardson to a mutual friend, giving the latter much sound 

 advice how to ride at the different fences — exactly where to take 

 off, and so on. 



Though I believe he won a small local steeplechase, if not 

 two, when at home in Lincolnshire for the holidays, when 

 actually a boy at Harrow, it was not until November, 1865, 

 being at the time an undergraduate at Cambridge and not yet 

 out of his teens, that Mr. Richardson's steeplechase-riding 

 career may be said to have commenced in earnest. 



Though entered on the books of Magdalen College, he was 

 never actually in residence there, taking up his abode in 

 preference at French's well-known lodging house by Park 

 Street, Jesus Lane, which was literally a hotbed of young 

 sportsmen, amongst those living there at the same time as 

 himself being the Honourable Harry Fitzwilliam, the late 

 Mr. Leopold de Rothschild, and the late Rev. Cecil Legard, 

 all three of whom, like himself, have since made their mark in 

 the world of sport. 



Mr. Harry Fitzwilliam, for instance, distinguished himself 

 in early life, by being one of the very few horsemen — they were 



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