RACING 



institution on Australian courses for some few years before its 

 adoption in this country : every one remembers the animated 

 discussion which followed the Jockey Club's decision to 

 establish it on English courses two years after it had first been 

 experimentally tried. The Tathwell Stakes at the Lincoln 

 meeting of 1900 was the first race to be started by the gate 

 under the compulsory rule which applied to the two-year-old 

 events of that season, by way of progressively introducing the 

 appliance to all races. Few of those connected with the turf 

 would care to revert now to the old flag system of starting. 



The autumn of 1897 saw the appearance at Newmarket of 

 Sloan the American jockey, whose peculiar seat on a horse 

 furnished food for abundant merriment — for a time. ' That 

 Sloan,' says Mr. Charles Richardson in The English Turf, 

 * won races was at first regarded as a benevolent freak of 

 Providence : for who, taking the accepted English seat as the 

 model of perfection, could do justice to the race-horse in the 

 monkey-on-a-stick attitude assumed by the American ? ' 

 Jocular criticism was silenced, however, when, in the autumn 

 of 1898, Sloan came to England again, and in 98 races rode 

 41 winners, 21 seconds, and 7 thirds. The peculiarity of his 

 seat perhaps did something to blind the majority to the fact 

 that he was an extraordinarily good judge of pace and had 

 exceptionally good hands. Sloan's success revolutionised the 

 style of race-riding in Britain, but the change has not been all 

 for the better. Races are now run from start to finish more 

 frequently than they used to be, and this is attributed to the 

 impossibility of properly controlling the horse when the 

 ' monkey-on-a-stick ' seat is assumed. To the same cause may 

 be traced the frequent interference with one another of horses 

 and ' bumping finishes.' After all, the old-fashioned seat in the 

 saddle which allowed the jockey to ride his horse had much 

 to recommend it over the attitude said to have been copied 

 from North American Indian horsemen. 



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