4 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



with the slightest interest to avoid remarking that the crack three-year-old was 

 ridden in all his victories by his own lad, Herbert Jones, a young man of very slight 

 experience, in spite of the fact that the stable had first claim on the best English 

 jockey of the day. This was of course easily explained by the fact that the horse 

 had a very extraordinary temper ; and though it improved very much, yet he would 

 always go more kindly for his own lad than for M. Cannon or anyone else ; and no 

 one who saw the masterly way in which Jones sat tight, while Disguise II. got so 

 good a place that many thought Mr. James R. Keene had got another Iroquois, 

 could regret that the lad had been given the chance he used so well. But the 

 pessimistic critics who are always on the look out for evil omens, harped on the 

 coincidence that in the same season the list of winning jockeys was headed by an 

 American ; that five out of the leading ten belong to the same nationality ; and that 

 Reiff, who beat Loates for the premier position, secured 143 races out of 553 mounts, 

 while the Englishman had to make 809 attempts to score six victories less. The 

 more old fashioned of us consoled ourselves with the remembrance that none of the 

 classic events fell to the foreigner, for apart from the successes of Herbert Jones 

 already choniclecl, S. Loates got the One Thousand Guineas on Winifrcda, and M. 

 Cannon added the Oaks, with La Roche, to a list which contains the Lincoln 

 Handicap, the City and Suburban, the Metropolitan, and the Middle Park Plate. 

 Ascot, however, was undoubtedly the spoil of the Americans, for Sloan was credited 

 with the Stakes, and the New Stakes, and the Ascot Cup ; and a score which contains 

 the Royal Hunt Cup, the Princess of Wales's Stakes at Newmarket, the Stewards' 

 Cup, the Goodwood Cup, and the Great Ebor Handicap all won by the younger Reiff 

 is not to be despised under any circumstances. 



The third name on the 1900 list of winning owners suggests that question of 

 reform which has been somewhat too intimately associated with the " American 

 Invasion " so characteristic of the last year of the nineteenth century. Lord Durham 

 has never shown himself lacking in the courage of his opinions, and a few outspoken 

 utterances from his lordship during 1900 did much to clear the air. Lord Crewe's 

 speech at the Gimcrack dinner was a judicious contribution to a controversy that 

 might otherwise have gone a little too far. The Jockey Club, however, deckled to 

 deprive patrons of the Turf of the sight of Sloan's style of riding. If not 

 beautiful it was certainly effective ; and though, as will be seen later on in this book, 

 it was hardly as original as many seemed to think, it proved at any rate of some 

 service to the English Turf. 



