Gentlemen Riders 



CAPTAIN HORATIO ROSS 



A NAME which will ever remain historical in the Annals of 

 Sport, as one of its finest exponents in whichever branch he 

 undertook, is that of Captain Horatio Ross. 



The *' King of Sportsmen " — to give him the title by which 

 he was known during the latter part of his life — was born in 

 Forfarshire in 1801, and in early life served for some little 

 while in a Dragoon regiment. In the early twenties of the 

 century, we find him with a stud of hunters at Melton, where 

 he soon made a name for himself as one of the hardest riders 

 that had been seen in those parts for many a long day. It 

 was whilst there in 1826, that the match took place, which 

 has since become historical, on account of its being the first 

 steeplechase ever recorded, between Clinker (11 st. Bibs.), 

 belonging to and ridden by himself, and Lord Kennedy's 

 Radical (12 st. gibs.), steered by Captain Douglas, over four 

 miles of country, from Barkby Holt to Billesdon Copton, for 

 two thousand guineas a side, Clinker winning easily at the 

 finish. 



" I was pilot that journey," says Dick Christian, in alluding 

 to the match in one of his famous lectures in The Post and 

 the Paddock, " Captain Ross," he goes on, " didn't know 

 whether to take Clinker or a chestnut mare of General Peel's 

 — he was to have her for five hundred guineas if he liked — so 

 we had a trial over the ground, five on us. Captain Ross gets 

 on the mare and puts me on Clinker — I gave every one of 

 them 10 lbs., each of them had thirteen stone, and I did 'em ; — 

 it was a deal more than four miles, and we went it in 11^ 

 minutes — going the pace, wasn't it, with all that weight } The 



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