262 THE ENGLISH TURF 



may now be regarded as a settled institution with us. When, 

 in the autumn of 1897, Sloan made his appearance at New- 

 market, primarily to ride the horses owned jointly by Mr. 

 Pierre Lorillard and the late Lord William Beresford, small 

 could have been the suspicion of the tremendous revulsion 

 in the way of race-riding in England which he was inaugu- 

 rating. That Sloan 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 racehorse in the monkey-on-a-stick attitude assumed 

 by the American ? How, in that position, could he get any- 

 thing out of his horse, how keep it straight, and how use the 

 whip ? But whilst people continued to argue out the theory 

 of the thing, Sloan kept on winning, and not always on the 

 most likely of mounts, the attempt to show that his success 

 was due to horses being kept for him, and mounts picked, 

 not coming very well out of the ordeal of comparison with 

 facts. No doubt he had his fair share of armchair rides, but 

 what jockey in the front rank is denied these ? Asa contrast 

 he had a far larger proportion than anyone else of quite un- 

 expected successes, and during the brief season he was here 

 he rode in fifty-three races, in which he scored twenty firsts, 

 nine seconds, and six thirds — thirty-five times placed to 

 eighteen times unplaced. The following year Sloan again 

 rode in England in the autumn only, but he rode many more 

 times, his record being ninety-eight races, and his score forty- 

 three firsts, twenty-one seconds, and seven thirds — seventy- 

 one times placed to twenty-seven times unplaced. If his 

 mounts were being picked for him and the horses kept, one 

 must at least accord an extraordinary measure of skill and 

 astuteness to those responsible for the picking. It could not 

 strike one as otherwise than remarkable, however, if such 

 successful preparation of winners were feasible, that it had 

 not been discovered before, and that the advent of Sloan 

 had been awaited for its full development. Nothing is more 

 likely than that Sloan rode winners who, properly ridden, 

 were " morals " for those particular races ; but the trouble 

 with trainers had been to get jockeys to ride them properly, 

 or, at the least, to ride them to orders. Sloan's art consisted 



