Hard men
Robin Oakley
There was only one word to describe jockey Richard Johnson on Double Honour after the Tim Molony Handicap Chase at Haydock: knackered. Richard is a supremely fit athlete at the top of his profession. Having watched him wolf down a ‘full English’ at the local pub near Richard Phillips’s Adlestrop stables, I can testify he is not one who gets up on a horse faint with weakness from wasting to reach his riding weight. But Double Honour is one of those who only does as much as you ask. So, under top weight, in going that would have clawed the boots off a farm-worker in 50 yards, Richard had to keep asking. He drove his mount every yard of the three and a half miles and then rode a desperate finish to get over the line still a head up on the fast-closing Artic Jack. Coming back in he was all out, bent over his saddle gasping for air.
About the same time over at Fairyhouse in Ireland David Casey was riding a nice treble. Reports noted that in the course of the past year the rider had suffered a broken leg, a broken wrist, a dislocated hip and a broken neck vertebra. It made me think of the moment when the late Paul Kelleway, a particularly durable jockey, dashed back into the Sandown Park weighing-room after a fall yelling his head off with exhilaration. They thought he had lost it until he explained, ‘I hadn’t had a fall for 100 rides and I thought I was due a bad one.’ With a tumble to be expected every 13 rides, these really are the hard men of sport.
An early morning dash on Eurostar after a 5.30 a.m. finish at a Brussels Euro summit where the leaders stayed longer than the mother-in-law ended in frustration when I discovered Windsor had been frosted off. But for those with Christmas book tokens to hand there is currently rich consolation for such barren racing days.
Peter O’Sullevan’s Horse Racing Heroes (Highdown, £16.99) is an enviable canter down memory lane, enviable because of the success the ‘Voice of Racing’ enjoyed as an owner with the sprinter Be Friendly and because the lavish illustrations include many reproductions of his successful betting slips. He must have some attic.
Peter’s friendship with the likes of Lester Piggott, Scobie Breasley and Vincent O’Brien produces rich anecdotage and he reveals, for example, why O’Brien ran The Minstrel in the Derby when he had been beaten both in the English and Irish 2,000 Guineas and never won over more than seven furlongs. Lester Piggott, frustrated in his hope of riding Blushing Groom, told O’Brien, ‘Run The Minstrel and I’ll ride him,’ adding, ‘and I’ll win, too,’ which he did, by a neck. O’Brien told O’Sullevan, ‘Who am I to gainsay the master?’ And the author comments, ‘Apart from his unique talent, Vincent appreciated that a major advantage of having Lester ride for you lay in him not riding against you.’ The sensitive The Minstrel was protect ed from the crowd noise which upsets some during the preliminaries at Epsom by cotton wool stuffed in his ears and removed at the start by the then assistant trainer John Gosden.
Sean Magee helped out with O’Sullevan’s book and his own Arkle (Highdown, £20) rekindles warm memories for those who cut their racing teeth on the great horse’s contests with Mill House. Warm history, neatly told and beautifully illustrated.
Arkle came out as the favourite horse of all time in a Racing Post poll and the paper conducted a similar exercise over the best race of all time. No two racing fans will ever agree on the placings in any such list but the Racing Post 100 Greatest Races (Highdown, £18.99), though maddeningly short of an index, includes descriptions of all the serious contenders such as Arkle v. Mill House, Sea Bird’s demolition of the 1965 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe field, Grundy v. Bustino (No. 3) and the Grand National Red Rum snatched from the front-running Crisp (No. 2).
Top accolade went to Desert Orchid’s success in atrocious conditions in the 1989 Gold Cup, when he rallied after the last fence to surge past Yahoo up the lungbursting final hill. ‘I’ve never known a horse so brave,’ says rider Simon Sherwood. And never have so many trilbies been thrown and trampled in a day.
Pick of this season’s books, though, is Vincent O’Brien, the official biography, by Jacqueline O’Brien and Ivor Herbert (Bantam, £20). This is the definitive biography of The Boss, the man who made Ballydoyle. O’Brien has an uncanny gift not just for training racehorses but also for choosing them, a gift which made him and his business partners rich men.
Truly a legend, the neat, disciplined perfectionist is the only man to have trained three consecutive Grand National winners. He performed the same feat with the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Champion Hurdle before he turned his attention to the Flat and won six Epsom Derbys and three Arcs.
A good horse, says O’Brien, who would never buy a colt with a feminine head, should look like a male ballet dancer. To give you just a taste of a book no racing man should be without, here is the description of O’Brien at the sales, looking at a colt:
His earnest advisers stand back in silence, protecting the small, dapper figure in front who, like a footballer about to take a vital penalty, stands and stares. It is as if Vincent can see not only into the yearling’s heart and lungs, but into his brain, into his character and thus, by definition, into his future. It is magical, almost mystical to watch.
Profitable, too. O’Brien bought The Minstrel, whom others considered too small, for $200,000. As a stallion he syndicated for $9 million, providing the capital with which Coolmore took off.
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