148 STEEPLECHASING 



In 1S65, George Stevens was again on the back of 

 Emblematic, and on this occasion his riding was some- 

 what adversely criticised, some people asserting that he 

 lay too far from his horses, and came too late, so that he 

 only ran third. But George Stevens was a rare judge of 

 pace, and probably knew as much about riding a race as 

 any of his critics, and it must be remembered that it was 

 one of his plans, when in a large field, to keep well out 

 of the crowd, for he used to assert that more steeple- 

 chases were lost by horses being interfered with, than by 

 they themselves coming to grief. Holding this opinion 

 so strongly he seldom made running, and never by any 

 chance did he bustle his horses at their fences. In fact, 

 to see him ride at a water jump one would imagine that 

 he was riding merely at a ditch. 



Soon after this his connection with Lord Coventry 

 came to an end, but in 1869 and 1870 he won with The 

 Colonel, and his double victory on the same horse and 

 the fine horsemanship he exhibited on each occasion 

 will not yet have been forgotten by those who saw 

 the races. 



He had somewhat of a triumph in steeplechase 

 riding in the year 1858. He rode a horse called The 

 Minor in that year, at Carmarthen, and the course then 

 included the Welsh banks in all their primitive rugged- 

 ness, some of them being about seven feet high, and 

 quite broad on the top. The Minor, it appears, had no 

 experience in jumping these sort of obstacles, so on the 

 day before the race George Stevens took out his mount 

 with a halter and lunging rein and led him over a couple 

 of dozen banks, and the horse soon found out that he 

 had to jump on and off. As luck had it the race was 

 run at a slow pace, and George Stevens' beautiful 

 handlinof stood him in excellent stead, for he contrived 

 to keep The Minor on his legs all the way round, and 

 as soon as he was over the last bank he was happy, as 



