AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 337 



LIVERPOOL, Thursday, 10th July, 1884. 



Thursday Plate of 100 guineas ; about five furlongs, 



Mr. J. Martin's Black Diamond, 3 yrs., 9 st. 3 lb., . . J. Osborne 1 

 Mr. Wadlow's Frolic, 4 yrs., 9 st. 12 lb., . . . F. Archer 2 



Betting — 2 to 1 on Frolic. 



Black Diamond came on with the lead, and, stalling off the challenge of the 

 favourite, won an exciting race by a short neck. The winner was sold to Mr. 

 Wadlow for 125 guineas. 



On the first day's nirming it was thought by the 



Wadlow party that Osborne had thrown the race away 



by inferior jockey ship on the favourite, Frolic. The 



pair met the next afternoon on exactly the same 



terms, over the same distance, in single combat,. 



with the jockeys and the verdict reversed. Clearly 



on this showing in a match, Archer and Osborne were 



identically the same class horsemen. A practical 



illustration of this kind is worth more than thousands 



of arguments. When John rode back a winner on 



Black Diamond the second day his face was illumined 



with pardonable smiles, and as he made his way to the 



weighing-room he was received with as much enthusiasm 



as if he had won a Derby, instead of a Selling Plate. 



This achievement of defeating Archer he accomplished 



in the fifty-first year of his age, after he had been 



riding in pubhc for thirty-eight years, and when he was 



old enough to be Archer's father. It was the finest 



trial between two great horsemen probably ever seen 



on a public racecourse, dispelling, as it did, without 



the shadow of a doubt, the erroneous assumption that 



Archer could have won on the second horse the first 



day, and j^roving at the same time that John Osborne 



was a jockey to whom even Archer could not give 



weight. Surely those who thought so at the time had 



closed their eyes to public form at Goodwood in the 



two races under like circumstances, when John beat 



z 



