AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 33 T 



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 running it was thought by the 

 Wadlow party that Osborne had thrown the race away 

 by inferior jockeyship 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 public 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 proving 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 



