There is no such person as a fat jockey – The Property Chronicle
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There is no such person as a fat jockey If riders cannot do the weight then they do not have a job

The Professor

The result of the 1886 Cambridgeshire horse race shows that St Mirin was beaten a neck by Sailor Prince and that the losing horse carried a pound overweight. Jockey, Fred Archer, rider of second-placed St Mirin, blamed himself for the defeat as he had been unable to rid himself of that excess pound. While riding in Ireland Archer had received a telegram from the Duchess of Montrose, owner of St Mirin, stating that ‘my horse runs in the Cambridgeshire. I count on you to ride it’. Archer needed little persuasion. He had been champion jockey for thirteen consecutive seasons but had never won a Cambridgeshire, a major non-classic race.  He had been racing in Ireland at 9 stones 4 lbs but, so keen was he to break his drought, that he undertook to ride at 8 stones 6 lbs, a reduction of 12 lbs in less than a week. He attempted to achieve this by not eating at all on three days, counteracting the intake at other times by doses of a devastating purgative, especially devised for him by Dr. Winter, a Newmarket physician, and, when not riding, making use of the Turkish bath attached to his Falmouth House residence. 






The Professor

About Wray Vamplew

Wray Vamplew

Wray Vamplew is Emeritus Professor of Sports History at the University of Stirling and Global Professorial Fellow in the Academy of Sport, University of Edinburgh. Currently he is writing Games People Played, a global history of sport for Reaktion Press and is General Editor for Bloomsbury’s six-volume Cultural History of Sport. He can be contacted at wray.vamplew@ed.ac.uk

Articles by Wray Vamplew

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