Gentleman Jockey

In 1895, at the Bay District Track in San Francisco, Jockey W. C. ("Bill") Clancy performed a great feat. He won a steeplechase and a flat race on the same afternoon. Last week, in Brookline, Mass., another jockey performed the same feat: George Herbert ("Pete") Bostwick won the Metropolitan Driving Club, a 1-1/16-mi. flat race, on J. F. Byers'. Glaneur, then the Chamblet Memorial steeplechase on Mrs. Ambrose Clark's Madrigal II. There was only one thing to diminish Jockey Bostwick's satisfaction at having equalled such a celebrated record. He had done it once before. Two weeks ago at Belmont Park, L. I., he rode

Thomas Hitchcock's Silverskin in a steeplechase, Latin Stables' Ha Ha in a flat race, won with both. For the last four years, young Pete Bostwick has been the leading amateur jockey in the U. S. Two years ago, in England, he rode ten winners out of 25 mounts. Now 22, he began to ride at 7. His first teacher was his famed aunt, Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock, "mother of U. S. polo." Another teacher was his uncle. F. Ambrose Clark, who still drives a coach & four at Westbury, L. I. and goes abroad every year to hunt at Melton Mowbray. His older brothers are Albert C. Bost wick, whose racehorse Mate won the Preakness last year, and Dunbar Bost wick, who played on the Yale polo team which last week beat Harvard 13-to-9 for the intercollegiate champion ship. No self-educated sportsman like Eddie Eagan (see col. 3), Jockey Bost wick inherited a fortune before he left St. Paul's school, then decided not to go to college. Said he : "There is no use sitting in school when one can sit on a horse and go somewhere." When Jockey Bostwick began to take polo seriously two years ago, he quickly had his handicap raised to six goals, barely missed being No. 1 on the U. S. team that beat England in 1930. An expert golfer, he won the Byers Cup at Aiken a year ago. Short (5 ft. 2 in.), light (118 lb.), he has an ideal build for a jockey: slim legs, good muscles in arms & shoulders. His hands are strong, unusually clever. Next winter he plans to ride one of his own horses in the Grand National at Aintree, where neither a U. S.-bred horse nor a U. S. amateur jockey has ever finished first.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.