RACE RIDING 153 



home, and glad I was to get there ! After we had weighed 

 Flatman clapped me on the back and said, " Don't you be in 

 such a hurry, youngster. Never whip your horse when you are 

 in front. I very nearly did you that time ! " : 



Patience is the golden rule. Whips and spurs must always 

 be last resources, and they are very mischievous implements in 

 inexpert hands and on indiscreet heels. A couple of sharp 

 strokes in the last fifty yards, or a thrust of the spurs, may make 

 a difference of half a length, and so change defeat into victory 

 in a severely contested race ; but the whip should never be got 

 out till the horse has distinctly and unmistakably failed to re- 

 spond when ridden with the hands, and as for spurs, it is the 

 boast of Tom Cannon, an unsurpassed master of his craft, that 

 in a hundred animals he has ridden in a hard finish not three 

 are found after the race with spur marks on them. Archer in 

 his later days frequently rode with blunt rowels, though it must 

 be added that these are capable of inflicting great punishment. 



It has been already insisted on that the final effort must 

 never be made until the horse is prepared to make it, until, 

 that is to say, the animal has been duly ' steadied,' and it may 

 here be further observed that to * steady ' a horse is not, of 

 course, to pull it out of its stride ; the action indeed is a some- 

 what delicate one, for it may easily be overdone by coarse and 

 clumsy hands, but its efficacy when properly accomplised is 

 remarkable. The observant race-goer will often see, while one 

 after another the jockeys' whips are raised, the really artistic 

 rider is steadying his horse and patiently delaying his effort. He 

 is, as the phrase goes, ' nursing ' his horse till his instinct tells 

 him that the moment has come when the rush must be made, 

 by which time the whips are doing more harm than good, and 

 the horse that has been steadied will reward his rider's patience. 



The way in which races are lost and won has perhaps 



never been more happily illustrated than in a sketch from life 



of a once familiar incident described in a former volume of this 



Library, 1 and the description is so completely to the present 



1 Racing, p. 79 



