What is called “standing on the stirrups” consists chiefly in bringing the weight forward on to both thighs. In this position the rider has a greater power of adjusting the balance of his weight to the movements of his horse. In racing it is practically proved to be _essential_. And it is of infinite service to the horse in the long and severe galloping of hunting.
It is surprising that the English are the only people who rise in the stirrup at a trot; it is not surprising that other nations are beginning to follow their example.
[Sidenote: Difference between the gallop and the leap.]
In galloping, the horse’s legs catch the eye most when they are from under him, and he is drawn with all four from under him. In truth, his hind legs are under him when his fore legs are from under him, and his fore legs are under him when his hind legs are from under him; his hind feet pass over where his fore feet rested, so that from footprint to footprint he clears very little _space_. In fact, owing to what is called _leading_ with one leg, the line between his two fore feet and the line between his two hind feet are by no means at right angles to the line of his direction; so that the greatest distance from footprint to footprint is not nearly half his stroke. The leap differs from the gallop not only in the greater _space of ground_ cleared by the feet, but in the greater _space of time_ for which the feet quit the ground; this last difference is of more importance than might be imagined.
[Sidenote: Steeple-chases unfair on the horse.]
Antæus was not peculiar in his dependence for strength on contact with his mother earth. In leaping, neither man nor horse can draw breath while in the air, that is, from the time the feet leave the ground till they again touch it. But _quick_ breathing (the creber anhelitus) is not only a consequence of distress for wind, but it is a vital necessity when distressed for wind. And the impossibility to draw breath when off the ground is the reason of the death of horses in steeple-chasing and hurdle-racing; they die of suffocation. The reason is a sufficient one for the discontinuance of such racing and chasing.
A mounted horse will overtake a dismounted horse, his superior in speed. It is the common error to suppose that this results from the mechanical assistance of the rider. The real reason is, that the dismounted horse goes off, like an inexperienced jockey, at his utmost speed. I do not believe that a horse can do this for more than a hundred yards without being distressed for wind (and I speak from experience with Mr. Drummond Hay’s barbs at Tangier, which were trained to the feat). The rider starts at a pace which he knows his horse can keep, and the dismounted horse, though he gains on him at first, _comes back to him_ as the jockeys say: for a horse which has been distressed for wind in the first hundred yards, will not arrive at the end of a mile nearly so soon as if he had gone the whole at the best pace he could stay at. Here the assistance from the rider is mental not mechanical.