The Sun.
London, England, 1858-04-10 00:00:00

ENGLISTI 4 \D AMERICAN JOCKEYS.

We take frotn an American paper the following
remarks :

Among the questions which have been the sub
int of discussion with American Trirfmen since
the commencement of the campaign which Mr. Ten
Broeck instituted on the racing fields of England,
is ono that embraces a comparison of the merits of
American and English jockeys ; and we are bound
to say, now that the first heat of the grand tourna-
ment is over, that opinion goes vastly in favour of
our foreign friends, against ourselves. In truth,
practical observation was not requisite to the de-
cision of this question ; for the least reflection
would have settled the point in favour of the Eng-
lish rider. There is a law of Heaven—none better
settled in the experiences of man—that the highest
rewards of proficiency and excellence are only to be
paid to the most prolonged and patient effort. This
law was made and instituted on the day when our
first parents took their leave of Paradise, and it has
been ratified by man, in sweat and toil, and conse-
crated by God in the rewards which he has dis-
pensed upon those labours, through countless ages
since. The English jockey is virtually born under
a horse's belly ; ho lives on his back ; he knows
every hair in his hide, every bone in his frame,
every trick and incination in his mind. He has no
ambition but his cap and colours, and he is the
servant of his master. He not only knows, by
careful study, the rise, and fall, and curve of every
track in the kingdom, and the peculiarities of all
the rival racers he may chance to meet, but he
knows—what, perhaps, is equally important—the
characteristics andartifices of all the l-ading j )ckeys
in the business. Moreover he is continually about
the stable, continually making trials ; and in addi-
tion to riding a great number of races in every
month, and perhaps, at every meeting. He is
nevtr in want of a mount, even in the winter, so
long as gentlemen have a spare hunter in the stable,
when getting up a steeplechase or a run after a fox.
When a creature, thus disciplined, and forming
a part almost of the animal he bestrides,
comes up in line with thirty flashing coursers,
thirty keen, quick-witted, artful fellows like
himself, and contrives among them for the
start, and for the " play " after the start is made,
he is equal to the task not only of bringing forth
all the speed his horse possesses, but of so managing
him in the race, and lauding him at the end, that
he may win with the least expense of life, and with
as small an advantage as safety will admit of. The
English race is a game—more often a game of
jockeys than a test of horses; and when an accom-
plished master of the art is in the saddle, public
appreciation at once corroborates his chances by a
sensible alteration of the per-ceutages that follow
his fortunes in the betting-book. An American
jockey is a very different creature from an English
one, and he rides in a very different style. If he
be not a negro—as many of them are down south
—he considers himself a fort of gentleman ; and,
after riding some half-dozen matches in a season,
may, perhaps, lie fallow for a year or two, improv-
ing the interval by keeping a tavern, or, perhaps,
alternating the excitements of the mount by open-
ing a nulette on the track, or indulging in a
season OT two of faro.' This kind of life and
practice cannot compete with the devotion that
lives, breathes, eats, drinks, and sleeps only in its
profession; and it would be a complete absurdity
to expect equal excellence on our part from such
wholly inadequate preparation. If the fibre of the
English mind, on which these results are worked,
were any inferior at the out'et, we might possibly
have point for argument in our favour ; but we
apprehend that the most vain of our countrymen
will hardly claim any advantage in the way of
original, intellectual capital over a people who
have been great in every way and walk since
the dominion of the Caesars. The style of
racing in this country, moreover, does not
afford that opportunity for the improvement of
the jockey in an intricate knowledge of the
philosophy of his profession as well as the
English style does. In the first place, we race on
rouLd courses, at every turn of which the horse,
by his slackened speed, picks up a few mouthfuls
of relief ; the English, for the most part, run on
straight, or slightly curving, courses, over which
the art of the jockey must be made to humour his
animal, in order that he be not run to a stand-still.
It is a well-ascertained fact that a horse cannot be
kept at his top speed over a few hundred yards,
and that, unless he be eased at times, he would be
run out of breath, or, as the phrase goes, to a
stand-still.' This, the English jockey is oblige4atno
understand and humour; while the AnaotT,_w_n
jockey, though lio be ever so stupid a neg.:-
~,,uuJa
must necessarily put his horse thherotiinglev
inevitable
Y somewhat jockey-like, by in
reliefs which the straining
ani- *sal to this straight
formation of the course. the con-
running that we must ascriribte tihe
the style of `making
English inclina-
tion for a waiting race,
ooevend,
' as is the fashion in
the running from enod. waiting race, this ma-
this country. Out
etrateed hounding courser, in a
raging of a higli'm,nd and matter, comes that pro-
his art, and that wonderful
field of s•riving iof
makes the English jockey so
found knowl:ilifeh
proficiency,
more of a jockey than his American compe-
much
we could present many more reasons in
tutor.
evidence f
this, but the requirements of the dis-
cussion do not at present make demand for any
more. It is sufficiently clear that, however smart
a man or a nation may be, they cannot become pro-
ficient in any course by more intuitiveness ; and
that they who labour hardest to acquire will, in
the end, receive the consecration of superior skill.
Mr. Ten Brceck found this out, in regard to
jockeys, by going to England ; and we have disco-
vered it without going, by the mere application of
experience to the elements of season."