JOCKEYS 59 



fleet on the manner of riding that jockey displayed 

 in the Liverpool Cup last autumn on perhaps, in 

 point of merit, not one of the best animals running 

 in the race, in time as bad as could be. However, 

 experience tells us that jockey knows how to inflate 

 a horse's lungs as a race proceeds, and any one tak- 

 ing the trouble to ascertain the result of it will read- 

 ily find it amongst the records of the past season. 

 He rode winner after winner that should not have 

 been winners, at least on those occasions, if the 

 idea of merit was worth anything. 



It will be of interest, perhaps, and at the same 

 time in a w^ay tend to illustrate what I have pre- 

 viously written, if I refer to the running of Peter, 

 a horse that achieved a famous victory in the 

 Royal Hunt Cup as Ascot nearly twenty years 

 ago, in the then popular colors of that fine sports- 

 man. Sir John B. Astley, Bart, 



Of this splendid success, rendered historic by 

 sporting writers of every degree, the simple facts, 

 as I have always understood them, were these. 

 After being backed by his owner, and, indeed, by 

 many others, to win a large stake (so popufar was 

 anything carrying the canary jacket in those days), 

 the horse only got home, to land them their money, 

 after stopping to kick whilst the race was being 

 run, and when the field had got about half way 

 through the Journey. 



