The turf
People a la mode
Robin Oakley
Watching the tiny figure of Michael Roberts in his black windcheater crouched above one of Neil Graham's two-year-olds as they steamed up Newmarket's watered gallop the other morning, I was reflecting how fickle racing fashion can be. Whether tangerine or lemon is this year's 'in' colour or whether skirts are to be worn at knee- level or closer to the armpit matters little. It is the fashion in people which can be so illogically wasteful.
Michael Roberts had ridden 900 winners in his native South Africa before he started riding here. He has been champion of his home country 11 times. He had a record strike rate in Japan. And When he was champion jockey here in 1992 he became one of the select band to ride more than 200 winners in a season. Trainers tell me that few jockeys can give them more infor- mation about a horse on dismounting. Typ- ically that morning he had plenty of suggestions about the future programme of the two-year-old he had sat on just once. He is one of the handful of world-class jockeys riding here. And yet this year he languishes well outside the top 20 in terms of winners ridden.
Anyone at Leicester in mid-July would certainly have wondered why. That day Roberts rode a four-timer, starting with Catfoot Lane at 20-1 and then bringing home Colleville (4-1), Cornflower Blue (7- 2) and Uplifting (8-11) to complete an 815- 1 accumulator. There are, to my mind, few jockeys who can coax more out of a tired horse than Michael Roberts. He has what someone called in his apprentice days in South Africa 'the electric bump'. Horses relax and run for him in a way they will not always do for others.
He is, too, still hungry for winners. There he was with Neil Graham that morning to try out a single unraced two-year-old. The day before he had covered 600 miles to ride at Ripon in the afternoon and Carlisle in the evening. And he surely proved his character when he first started riding in England and resentful northern jockeys in particular used to carve him up on the bends, make spoof calls pretending to be trainers and even cut up his clothes. Hav- ing been brought up in a tough Afrikaner household, Michael shrugs it off, saying simply, 'I was knocked about a bit.' It doesn't happen now to other foreign stars like Olivier Peslier, says the diplomatic Roberts, because there was less racing in the late 1970s and it has all become much more international now.
I talked to him at Goodwood this year. There is no trickier track to ride in Britain and the previous year he had excelled there with rides on Maylane and Double Trigger. Did he have mixed feelings about Double Trigger's third victory this year with some- one else on board? Not a bit of it. Pointing out that he had ridden Double Trigger in 1997 only because Jason Weaver had cho- sen the younger brother Double Eclipse, he declared generously, 'I'm just thrilled for the horse. I know how the stable love him and I was lucky to ride him last year. We need animals like that for the public.'
So why is he not getting the rides that he deserves? There are some contributory fac- tors. Both Alec Stewart and Clive Brittain, two trainers who do regularly put him up, have had their sticky patches this season. Richard Hannon, who was responsible for a number of winners in the year he won the championship, has his own regular riders to accommodate first. And, as Michael Roberts points out, it is all much more com- plicated these days with big owners, rather than stables, having retained jockeys. Kieren Fallon's retainer with Henry Cecil, he says, is one of the last of the old-fashioned stable jockey links. But it is from his time as con- tract rider to Sheikh Mohammed that the winner totals have declined.
As champion jockey in 1992 Michael Roberts drove home 206 winners. The next year he took on the post with the Sheikh after Frankie Dettori and Mich Kinane had ruled themselves out. He was unlucky a few times in opting which horse to ride in big races and clearly did not get on well with John Gosden, one of the Sheikh's main trainers. He still though rode 114 winners and insists he has no regrets. Riding really good horses, he says, is what it is all about. And that year he won the Oaks, the Coro- nation Cup and the King George on horses like Barathea and Opera House. He rode seven Group One winners and had his best year ever in terms of prize money collected.
But since the ending of the Sheikh Mohammed connection the statistics have told their own story. It was as if some peo- ple in racing had decided that if Sheikh Mohammed had dispensed with him he was for the cupboard under the stairs along with hula hoops and Sixties flares. Michael Roberts dropped from 114 to 80 winners the next year, then 63, then 33. But now he is on the upward curve again. He rode 49 winners last season and is on target to exceed that comfortably this year. And though he plans one day to train he reck- ons there are a few in the weighing-room to retire before he does. He has around 150 winners to go to a career total of 4,000. And he won't think of quitting the saddle before that. Young trainers in need of a wise head aboard their horses please note.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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