End of Steve

For a quarter of a century British racing crowds have shouted themselves hoarse, exulted, wept, torn handkerchiefs and smashed toppers for a bandy-legged, wizened little Irishman who always responded to an imploring "Come on, Steve!" Last week in London, Steve Donoghue, still going strong at 52, announced that this, his 31st year as a jockey, would be his last.

Steve Donoghue's first mount, Turkish Delight, at Dublin's Phoenix Park in 1907, was a winner, but Jockey Donoghue did not become a familiar figure to British enthusiasts until he won the Cambridgeshire at Newmarket three years later. In 1915 he was entrusted with a Derby favorite. S. Joel's Pommern, and won--a performance he repeated two years later with Gay Crusader. In 1921 Jockey Donoghue became a British hero when he brought in his third Derby winner, the 6-to-1 shot Humorist, who dropped dead from heart failure six weeks after the race. The following year, when his mount, Lord Woolavington's big Captain Cuttle, showed up lame just before the starting parade and the odds jumped to 10-to-1, Steve Donoghue rode to his smoothest Derby victory. When he won again the next year with Ben Irish's 100-to-15 shot Papyrus, he and his mount were sent to the U. S. to race against that year's Kentucky Derby winner, Zev, with famed Earl Sande up. Donoghue and Papyrus lost the race and Mr. Irish lost the $100,000 purse.

Steve Donoghue won the Derby once more after that--in 1925 with H. E. Morris' Manna--to set a record of six Derby victories. His total of 1,840 winners does not approach the all-time record of 2,775, established by England's 19th Century Fred Archer. He has won for his employers considerably less money than Jockey Sande's record of $3,034,858. And by retiring this year he will cut himself off from another record: 46 years of jockeying, set by Great Britain's John Osborne. As a public figure, however, Steve Donoghue has equaled any of them. When he broke his leg during a race in 1930, King George V sent his personal best wishes for a quick recovery. Already well known to British cinema audiences, he appeared on the U. S. screen last spring in a Derby picture called Wings of the Morning, where his silks shone in Technicolor and he amiably submitted to jokes about his height.

To the last Jockey Donoghue kept his weight down to 110 lb. Lately a contract rider for Sir Victor Sassoon, owner of Shanghai's ill-fated Hotel Cathay (see p. 14), he hoped to win this year's Derby with Sir Victor's Renardo, but finished in the ruck along with the favorite, the Marquis Evremond de St. Alary's French-bred Le Ksar.* But he showed his old touch on other occasions this season by winning the Oaks at Epsom Downs and the One Thousand Guineas at Newmarket with Sir Victor's Exhibitionist, the Irish Derby with Phideas. Jockey Donoghue's new job will not be training Sir Victor's horses, as was expected, but writing racing news for an Australian syndicate.

*Last week at A. S. Hewitt's breeding arm near White Post, Va., Le Ksar's famed sire, Ksar, died of an internal hemorrhage.

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