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Three jockeys and the Triple Crown of 1900 - Part One

Ahead of the 125th anniversary of the first part of Diamond Jubilee’s glorious Triple Crown, with Herbert Jones riding the colt to the first leg of the three major wins at the Two Thousand Guineas, volunteer Peter Bloor looks back on the success of the legendary horse and three jockeys who rode the colt.

“A sad exhibition of himself”

At the end of the 1899 Flat Racing season the royal trainer Richard Marsh had in his Egerton House yard a horse owned by the Prince of Wales named Diamond Jubilee, and with it he had a problem – the horse’s temperament and behaviour.

The problem had been on full display during Diamond Jubilee’s six races as a two-year-old that summer. He had made his debut in the Coventry Stakes at Ascot in June, but had lashed out more than once on his way to the start, where he also behaved badly, and after the race, or so the Sporting Life correspondent was told, had “reared and fought at the air, as it were, with his forelegs.” Worse still was his behaviour at Newmarket in the July Stakes, when he threw his jockey Jack Watts at the start and bolted; he was caught and remounted but, sweating up, only Watt’s strength prevented him from bolting again rather than racing as his jockey asked, with the result that they duly finished last.

“He might run more kindly with a fresh jockey”

Diamond Jubilee had started favourite for both races but, The Times correspondent mused, “it is very perplexing to know what it is best to do with such a colt, whose sterling qualities are paralysed by his untrustworthy disposition.” Mr. Marsh had an answer – to try another jockey, the magnificently-named Herbert Mornington Cannon, nicknamed Morny, for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Goodwood – when the horse gave up while leading as soon as Epsom Lad challenged him - and for the Boscawen Stakes at Newmarket when, perverse as ever, he won by a head having only got on terms with Paigle in the last two strides.

“John Watts cannot comfortably ride him…”

Watts had been finding it difficult to make the 9 stone weight carried by Diamond Jubilee and had voluntarily resigned the ride in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes to Morny, who only agreed to the switch after an informal chat that included the idea that Watts take his ride on Alt-na-Bea, overweight if necessary. It had been falsely rumoured that Watts resented being replaced - and the ride on Alt-na-Bea going to an apprentice, Otto Madden, cannot have helped - but there was no ill-feeling between the two jockeys who were close friends and who would exchange places again in the autumn.

“In the hands of Watts…the best form of his life”

Morny being engaged to ride for the Duke of Westminster he was unavailable for Diamond Jubilee’s last two races of the season in October, the Middle Park Plate and the Dewhurst Plate, both at Newmarket. Jack Watts returned for both and, perverse to the end Diamond Jubilee, who had refused to put in the effort Watts had asked him for at Ascot, now briefly looked a possible winner on both occasions and gamely ran second - and straight - in the Middle Park, for which Watts’ horsemanship was praised – and then second again, (admittedly of three), in the Dewhurst.

“Diamond Jubilee completely vindicated his character in the autumn”

The correspondent of the Morning Leader may have concluded from these two second places and the horse’s improved behaviour that Diamond Jubilee was “not the worthless dangerous brute he seemed likely in the summer to develop into” but still The Times’ question remained – “what to do with such a colt.”

“The running of the Prince of Wales’s colt has been preposterously exaggerated”

In addition to his frightening and dangerous behaviour, rearing and kicking out, Diamond Jubilee had given up in one race and refused to race in another - and yet had won in the last two strides of a third. He had been schooled in jumping off at the start, fitted with an anti-rearing bit and on four out of six occasions raced at Newmarket, close to his Egerton House yard, but even Jack Watts, a consummate horseman, had still been obliged to fight him twice in four races.

Perhaps there was something in the Morning Leader’s early assessment that Diamond Jubilee had “an air of flashiness that suggests the show ring rather than the business of the racecourse”, in which case could such a horse be trusted? The answer to that question would initially prove to be no, and the answer to the question that posed, who was to ride him, would not be Morny Cannon. Like Watts, Morny knew his business - his win on Diamond Jubilee in the Boscawen Stakes was his 100^th of the season – but in time he would also know enough to have nothing more to do with the horse and would be replaced not by another eminent jockey but by a 19-year-old apprentice called Herbert Jones.

References

The quotes and other information in this article are taken from The Times, the Morning Leader, the Sporting Life, the Daily Telegraph and Courier and the Daily Chronicle of 1899.

Images – The Start Gallaher 1938, Diamond Jubilee Ogdens 1907

John (‘Jack’) Watts (‘Men of the Day. No. 380.’), by Liborio Prosperi (‘Lib’) published in Vanity Fair 25 June 1887 © National Portrait Gallery, reference NPG D44338

(Herbert) Mornington (‘Morny’) Cannon (‘Men of the Day. No. 521.’) by Sir Leslie Ward, published in Vanity Fair 24 October 1891 © National Portrait Gallery, reference NPG D44565