My Racing Adventures 



in a general way, I won the first two-year-old 

 race at Leopardstown on " Theophilus," and rode 

 the same day in a hurdle race, being unable to 

 bring off the double event. One cannot always 

 expect to perform prodigies of valour even 

 on a 2-lb. saddle. I went to Holland pretty 

 frequently in my early youth, and remember my 

 father once giving me the bare railway fare to 

 get there with in the most luxurious manner 

 possible. " You'll make plenty to get back with," 

 he remarked, " or if you don't, you ought to swim 

 your passage home." It was not necessary for 

 me to undertake that terrible ordeal. I rode a 

 few winners, made a little money, and one Dutch 

 owner wanted to pay me twice. He discovered 

 his mistake just in time, otherwise he might have 

 followed me to South Hatch. 



At that period the value of the stakes run for 

 in Holland was small, and some of the meetings 

 were conducted in rather a rural or primitive 

 fashion. The programme was mixed. Thus a 

 brother jockey, who had been riding in a remote 

 part of that country, gave me a funny account 

 of the revelry. He said : " We began racing at 

 about nine in the morning, and went at it all day 

 with desperate energy and animation. First there 

 was a trotting competition for funeral horses, 



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