1902 was a long time ago.

​I have just finished reading a book published in 1952, a year, as with 1902, that is from today’s perspective a long long time ago. It was, for instance, two years before my own birth. Though it was four-years after Lester Piggott made his racecourse debut on the 7th April at Salisbury. I mention Lester as it is odd to recall that he, though he has been retired now for over ten-years or more, could easily have raced against Joe Childs, author of the autobiography, ‘My Racing Reminiscences’, that I have just finished reading.
The reason I would encourage every jockey and trainer to write their autobiography or memoir is to be found in Joe Childs’ reminiscences. When the book was published Childs probably considered he was producing an extra bit of income to see him through retirement. But in effect he was placing in the racing archive an account of the sport as he lived it throughout his career. And he had longevity, beginning at the turn of the 20th century right through to somewhere between the end of the 2nd World War and 1950. Dates were not a strong suit of Joe Childs’ and in some ways his book is a bit of a mess, one of those autobiographies that badly needed an editor to knock it into shape. But there you are; he was a jockey not a wordsmith and a very successful jockey at that!
Of course, you will not know very much about Joe Childs, and I confess being in the same boat, as to use the name of a Hollywood film he rode during a time that could be summed-up as ‘The Past Is Another Country’. He rode successfully in France and Germany before he ever established himself in the country of his birth. And horse racing post 1900’s through to the early 1960’s held only a passing resemblance to the sport we have today. For most part there was no photo-finish camera, no patrol cameras, jockeys rode with a long length of leg and long rein even after Tod Sloan and his American compatriots sailed across the Atlantic to show the Brits how to ride from the front and still win. Races were started from barriers, an art of racing quite foreign to all jockeys from the Lester Piggott era onwards. In 1900 horses arrived at racecourses by train and if the station was several miles from the racecourse a long walk was involved. Jockeys, too, would travel in those early years of the century by train. It was a very different world.
In his book, Childs compares two fillies still remembered to this day in major races named in their honour, Sceptre and Pretty Polly, two horses that graced the racing stage within two-years of each other.
As was his want, Childs began the chapter comparing the two horses, siding in the second paragraph Sceptre as the superior of the two and though he wrote extensively about Sceptre and her owner Bob Sievier, he completely neglects Pretty Polly’s racing career. In his spirit, I too will omit to write about Pretty Polly.
Sceptre’s three-year-old career exemplifies the difference between how horses are campaigned today and in the 1900’s. Firstly she ran in all five classics, winning four of them. Do you think any horse will ever achieve a similar fete? Nor I. But she began her season by running in the Lincoln or the Lincolnshire Handicap as it was then called and being beaten by a short head! Incidentally, the horse that defeated her, St. Maclou, finished its season winning the Manchester November Handicap, a double that I suspect no horse will ever achieve again.
The filly was entered in all five classics. Again, I doubt if we shall ever see that sort of ambition again either. She won the 2,000 Guineas at 4/1 and 2-days later she triumphed in the 1,000 Guineas at the less than generous odds of 1/2. She did not though win the Epsom Derby and so does not qualify as a Triple Crown winner as she was beaten by Ard Patrick ridden by the American jockey Skeets Martin.
Childs expresses the view that the overall opinion was that if Sceptre had not run in the Lincolnshire Handicap, she could have won the Derby. They may have a point, though these critics gave no significance to the fact that she had already run in and won two classics in two days only a few weeks before Epsom and that 2-days later she came out and won the Oaks.
Later in the year, of course, she won the St.Leger, after which her owner, Bob Sievier cashed in on the mare and sold her to Sir William Bass for £25,000.
To return to the argument as to the reason Sceptre ‘only’ won 4 out of the 5 classics, it is interesting to note that in the following year’s Eclipse she again failed to beat her Epsom conqueror Ard Patrick, though she finished in front of the colt that was to win that year’s Triple Crown Rock Sand.
Amazingly, at least by todays standard when a classic winner would never be considered for a mere handicap, Sceptre won the Duke of York Handicap at Kempton later in the season, winning by a head, giving the runner-up 3-stone!
You understand now why Sceptre has a race named after her, though why she is not due a Group 1, the same as Eclipse, is beyond me.