TRAINERS AND JOCKEYS 253 



own with all his Yorkshire rivals. At Pontefract Steel trains 

 for one or two owners ; and at Beverley there are half a 

 dozen small stables which provide a moiety of the platers 

 for the Northern meetings. No flat-racers are trained in 

 Northumberland or Durham (though many thoroughbreds 

 are still bred in the last-named county), but Armstrong has 

 a long string at Penrith, in Cumberland, and wins many 

 races in the North, having in 1900 turned out eleven winners 

 of fifteen races, a number which is not quite up to his 

 average. Some few horses are trained in Scotland too, 

 chiefly in the vicinity of Ayr, but their efforts are mainly 

 confined to Scotland and the extreme North of England, 

 and very rarely do any of them win south of the Trent. 



JOCKEYS 



Whether the best of the jockeys now riding are as good 

 as the Clifts, Arnulls, Chifneys, Buckles, and Robinsons of 

 a hundred years ago, more or less, or as those who were 

 to the fore in the middle of the century, such as Bill Scott, 

 Marson, Butler, and Templeman, is a point which I need 

 not attempt to decide ; but it is, and has been for some 

 years past, the fashion to decry present-time jockeys, and 

 to extol nearly every knight of the pigskin of a former 

 generation. I am inclined to think that the riding has not 

 deteriorated among the front rank, but that there are not so 

 many good second-rate jockeys as there were some years 

 ago. Archer may have had more daring and Fordham* more 

 cunning than anyone who is now riding, but it is my opinion 

 that Watts, the Cannons, Madden, and Samuel Loates are 

 just as good as any five who can be mentioned during the 

 last thirty years, and that, at his weight, we have never seen 

 anyone so good as the American jockey Sloan. 



* The opinion which Mat Dawson expressed to us was that George Fordham 

 was undoubtedly the best of the jockeys that had come within his knowledge. 

 This relegation of his own apprentice, Fred Archer, to second place was a very 

 eloquent tribute to Fordham. To our representations in favour of Mornington 

 Cannon he replied, "He is what I call a dilettante jockey," a description which 

 is too delightful to be lost. Within a month or so of this conversation Mat 

 Dawson had followed Fordham and Archer to the beyond. — Ed. 



