"feet on the dashboard"

[George Thompson]

During the broadcast of the Preakness this past Saturday, during the analysis of the videotape of the race, one of the announcers was making the point that during the early stages of the race the jockey on the winning horse was working to hold his horse back from attempting to keep up with the horses on the lead.  He said "Look at his [the jockey's] feet, if you can.  As they say, he has his feet on the dashboard."
This is not exactly verbatim.  I don't suppose that anyone among us taped the broadcast, but if anyone did, please verify and correct my quotation.  If not, it will have to do.  In any event, I was interested because I have that expression in my notes from 50 years previously:

I was riding, of course, with long stirrups, and when I put my feet on the dashboard, as jockeys say, I could put 200 pounds on the reins.
Joe H. Palmer, This Was Racing, N. Y.: A. S. Barnes, 1953, p. 36.  [Palmer died in 1952; the book is a collection of columns written in the late 1940s & early 1950s.]  Palmer was making the point that it is very difficult for jockeys to control a racehorse, since they weigh about 100 pounds less that Palmer, are riding with short stirrups, and are on the back of a galloping racehorse, not the cantering riding stable horse that Palmer was trying and failing to control.
I assume that the expression alludes to the dashboard of a horse-drawn carriage and not of an automobile, so it is no doubt much older than 1950.  It's not in HDAS.

I dno't believe that I posted at the time the fact that the year before, during the post-race analysis of the 2002 Kentucky Derby, D. Wayne Lucas referred to the winning horse as having "gone out on the Bill Daly" -- that is, having taken the lead from the moment the starting gate opened.  This is another old racing expression, and it's interesting to see that it is still current.  HDAS has it from 1941.  I have:

[Bill Daly, a trainer of race horses] added "He's on the Bill Daly" to track vernacular, meaning a horse was in the lead all the way and getting the nod from the judges at the finish.
When the starter finally said "Come on!" I was off on the Bill Daly.
Winnie O'Conner, [Winfield Scott O'Conner]  Jockeys, Crooks and Kings: The Story of Winnie O'Conner's Life. . . .  N. Y: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930, p. 7 & 61

My apologies that there is nothing in this posting that alludes to some fascinating subtlety of pronunciation.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.