In 1895 a solitary American jockey, the African American Willie Simms, rode in British racing. His unusual riding style—virtually crouching along the horse’s neck with short stirrups, high knees, and a tight rein—was in contrast to that of the English jockeys who sat more erect with a comparatively straight knee and a good length of rein. Simms secured only four wins, insufficient to rank him in the top fifty in the jockeys’ championship. Yet these wins were the product of merely nineteen mounts, a winning percentage of 21.5, amongst the highest in the land. Although Simms never returned, his visit was a precursor of an American invasion of the British turf that was to have a significant effect on the practice and performance of horsemanship in the domestic racing industry.
How the American riding style originated is not clear. In his biography, Tod Sloan—to whom British turf historians often attribute the American seat—claimed that he discovered the advantages of the forward seat one day when trying to stop a horse that had bolted with him in the saddle. On another occasion he said that he lit on the style when larking about in the training yard. In the 1890s, however, his riding caused no comment in the American racing press, which suggests that such a style was already commonplace. A reasoned view is that it was devised by poorer stable hands in the southern states who often had to ride workouts without saddles, thus forcing them to grip the mane and lie along the horse’s neck for balance.
Simms had first shown the American seat to British race goers in 1895, but its real effectiveness was demonstrated in the next five years. Lester Reiff came over for a spell in 1896 and had sixteen winners. Next to arrive was Tod Sloan. On his first short visit in autumn 1897, he had fifty-three mounts and won on twenty of them. He returned the following autumn, again as the punter’s friend, with forty-three winners out of ninety-eight mounts, a phenomenally high percentage of 43.9. At the first October meeting at Newmarket, the headquarters of the English turf, he rode twelve winners out of sixteen mounts. The shocked British experts argued that “the very great majority of his successes . . . would have been gained with any competent jockey in the saddle,” and that if Sloan came over for a full season, it would be a different story. It was. His strike rate fell to 31.3%, but his 345 mounts yielded 108 victories, placing him fifth in the jockeys’ championship, though the jockeys above him had significantly lower winning percentages. In 1900, four of the top ten riders in the British championship were from the United States. Lester Reiff was champion, with Tod Sloan in close attendance, followed by Johnny Reiff (Lester’s lightweight brother) and John Henry ‘Skeets’ Martin. In addition, nineteen-year-old Danny Maher arrived late that season and secured twenty-seven wins from 128 rides, a sign of the talent that was to bring him the jockeys’ championship in 1908 and again in 1913. The Americans not only won a large number of races but also a high proportion of the ones in which they took part. In 1900, Maher, Johnny Reiff, and Martin topped 20%, Lester Reiff won 26%, and Sloan almost 27%, high figures when it is considered that, on many occasions, they were riding against each other.
Although the style was at first derided, it was eventually conceded that, by cutting wind resistance and giving a better weight distribution on the horse, the monkey-on-a-stick form of riding could be worth a ten-to-fourteen- pound advantage. But the story of the American triumph on the British turf is not as simple as this might imply. Most of the Americans were outstanding jockeys: Simms had won the Belmont twice (one of the races in the American triple crown), and his career winning percentage was around twenty five; Sloan had been principal rider for leading American owner William C. Whitney, and his success rate in the States was twenty-eight percent in 1895 and thirty-one percent the following year; and Maher had been a track champion at Providence in America, once winning sixty races in only thirty days. In addition, the Americans also brought with them different racing tactics based on their knowledge of the clock. Most of the Americans were also remarkable judges of pace because American trainers made more use of the stop watch than their British counterparts, who generally preferred to try their horses out against each other. The similarity of many American flat tracks made comparisons of times more meaningful than in Britain where “horses for courses” was a fair working rule. British jockeys had often raced almost half-paced in the earlier stages of a race and then swooped in for the final furlong or so. Champions such as Sam Chifney, George Fordham, and Fred Archer were all famous for their waiting game in which they came with a late rush to the winning post. In contrast, the Americans often raced from the front if they felt their mount could cope with the pace.
Opposition to the American riding style came from two sources: the jingoists and the conservatives. The former, alleged that “the swerving horse . . . seems to be the necessary concomitant of American jockeyship,” believed that British was best, and that in a tight finish (which the Americans tried to avoid by having their races won well before the finishing post), the British would triumph as they had greater control over their mounts. Others took refuge in the belief “that in the higher art of horsemanship as compared with jockeyship [English riders] are certainly superior to the Americans.” The conservative elements could not conceive that “generation after generation, jockeys have been sitting on the wrong part of a horse’s back [and] that the best place for the saddle is not where it has always been.”
Although not every American jockey had the ability of Sloan and Reiff, their results led to the engagement by British owners of lesser-ranked American riders. They enjoyed less success, but each mount they took was one less for British jockeys, who became “exceedingly doleful with the conviction that they were to be swept practically out of existence.” Increasingly, domestic jockeys began to take up the American style of riding and racing, and by September 1900 it was acknowledged that successful English jockeys “to a greater or lesser extent all ride more Americano.”
For the Record
Even when the success of the American seat was obvious, men such as S. E. Clayton, an owner for 45 years, refused to concede, arguing that “the introduction of the American seat has entirely destroyed true horsemanship. . . . It wins races but it is entirely trick riding, and smacks more of the hippodrome and circus than of the racecourse.”
