TOM LOATES 



saddle. However, whether he was fit to ride or not 

 makes no matter. He backed my two mounts and 

 both of them won. We had dinner that night and he 

 thanked me. He liad won a nice bit of dough. A 

 few days after, on the eve of his leaving for England, 

 he was interviewed by one of the newspaper men, and 

 was asked whom he thought were the best American 

 jockeys. He answered that Fred Taral was quite 

 a good rider, and also the coloured boy, Willie Sims, 

 while among the younger crowd he had noticed a 

 promising boy in the little kid Winnie O'Connor. 

 It didn't matter much, for I was doing too well 

 financially, and riding too many winners to need a 

 booster, but here was my friend giving a story to a 

 leading paper, and not only did he put a coloured 

 boy before me, but left my name out altogether ! I 

 wasn't exactly sore, but from that time I had a fixed 

 determination to go to England to see what I could 

 do against him. 



