The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1907-07-27

Injurious Effects on English Racing
of . Style That Wins.

The chief cause of bad starts is what
lis known as the swerving of horses.
When the tapes fly up it is common
thing for horses to collide, and occa-
sionally it happens that one of the best
horses fails utterly in the race
through having received a staggering
shock at the start. But do horses
swerve more than formerly? And if
so, is 1t the use of the starting-gate
which causes them to do so? There
| is no doubt that swerving has become
much more common, and the support
ers of the walking-up start believe that
| it might be greatly reduced at the be-
ginning of races by the method they
| recommend. AT the standing start the
horses have not, as 1t WERE settled
| down to their course in relation to one
another, and when the excitement of
| the start comes they plunge off madly
| to this or that side without respect for
| their neighbors. But the supreme
cause of swerving, not only at the
start but at every part of the race, is
| the modern style Of jockeyship-" he
American seat" No other cause can
be compared with this. 1t is difficult
to see how this cause can be removed,
or even modified in its operations, for
certainly no owner or jockey has the
least intention of reverting to the
English style of a dozen years ago.
se I'D tba A ri q N
or short seat was introduced here, the
superficial explanation of it's success
was that it offered much less resist
ance to the wind. 1t was noticed that
the jockey sat on the withers Of the
horse instead of on the middle Of its
back, that his knees were drawn up,
that he held his hands near the horses
mouth and that his body lay almost
fiat along the horses neck. He looked
like racing bicyclist. The grace of
the old jockeyship was gone. A mon
! key-on-t he-stiek grotesqueness had re-
placed it.. Still, the new style succeed
| ed 1t was universally adopted and
| then it was discovered that it depend
ed on sound principles in the distribu-
| llOn Oh WSlSHli NliSh WOlC Aetl AlOl Z
important than the mere reduction of
wind resistance.
| The driving power Of a horse resides
chiefly in his hind quarters, and this
part should be left as unhampered as
possible The old position of the sad
die in the middle of the back reduced
to a small but quite appreciable extent
| Al of 5,,ix i,a
If you ride a horse bareback you soon
| find that you are not sitting on the
middle of the back, but have slipped
| forward aginst the withers. 1t would
not be fair to deduce from this that
nature therefore intended that you
| should sit there, as we must not sup
pose that nature therefore intended
that you should sit there, as we must
| not suppose that nature conceived a
horse as created for the express pur-
pose of having a man on its back. But
at all events this is the position in
which a horse carries a man most
easily. Long before the American in
yasion Fordham and other English
Jockeys had half-guessed this truth It
may be said that in jumping or going
down hill in the American style the
strain on the fore legs of the horse
is too great; but in fiat racing these
considerations can be ignored, with a
slight reservation, perhaps, in the case
of the steep and forbidding Tattenham
| corner at EPSON. The great disad-
vantage of the short seat is that the
rider has much less control over the
horse. He has hardly any purchase;
he can stick on; but the horse be-
yond going in the direction required
of it, can do pretty well what it likes.
What would have been justly punished
as foul riding some years ago has now
to be accepted as an unhappy accident
beyond the control Of the jockey:-Lon-
don Spectator.