Hungry for victory
Robin Oakley
Wen James and Pamela Mason were ringing up the precocious Portland, she was allowed pretty much what she liked, to encourage her to develop her own personality. She wore lipstick and couture dresses at four and was introduced to cigarettes at the same age in the hope it would put her off the habit. Asked later how well the policy had worked, her father replied, 'Well, she's down to two packs a day.'
I sometimes wonder how life would have been if my father had taken a firmer line with my liking for a flutter, dating from my early teens, But then I did once tip him three winners, all at 12-1 or better, on his annual corporate trip to Ascot, and he had a full-time job trying to cure my mother of her addiction to retail therapy.
My teenage tipping feat earned me a £25 thank-you, in the days when that was real money, a memory which returned when at Ascot this year I backed Mine, the 16-1 winner of the Royal Hunt Cup. I had fancied three initially, but the clincher for Mine was that he was ridden by Richard Quinn. whom I had been talking to the week before and who is to my mind the best-value jockey on the circuit, I don't mean that he rides better than Kieren Fallon, Frankie Dettori or Darryll Holland. But he rides just as well as they do, and because his career path has lately kept him in quieter backwaters the horses he partners do not start at artificially cramped odds.
Mine's victory was a typical example of Quinn's brainy professionalism. Riding a horse with a hefty burden, he was well behind the early leaders in the frantic cavalry charge that the Royal Hunt Cup always becomes. He waited for the gaps, weaved his way through those who were crying enough with the deftness of a cyclist in a traffic jam, and launched his mount with split-second timing to prevail in a blanket finish. It was the epitome of riding cool. Another of Quinn's qualities was demonstrated at less exotic Folkestone on 7 June as the rider whose first winner was Bolivar Baby at Kempton in October 1981 rode his 2,000th winner on Whitsbury Cross. The horse had not looked happy with Folkestone's ups and downs, and many riders might have surrendered. Instead. Quinn kept coaxing and pushing and was rewarded with a short-head victory. I like hungry jockeys and Quinn, seeking to relaunch his career as a freelance after splitting last winter with Henry Cecil, is that precious combination, a hungry jockey drawing on a deep well of experience.
Quinn's 2,000 include three English Classic winners, including two St Legers on Snurge and Millenary, seven Classics abroad and a score of other Group One victories. He should have been on Generous when he won the Derby for Cole, but after a temporary falling-out Fahd Salman insisted on Alan Munro riding the horse on whom Quinn had been fourth in the 2000 Guineas.
A quiet, disciplined Scot, who looks ridiculously younger than his 42 years, Richard Quinn has been among the top ten jockeys for a decade, usually riding more than a century of winners. He spent the bulk of his career with Paul Cole, after a couple of unproductive years with Herbert Jones in Mahon, and was with Cole when he won the apprentice title 20 years ago. Their break-up after 17 years was an amicable one as was his departure from Henry Cecil last winter. A less loyal rider might well have parted sooner from Cecil, given the sad decline in winners and in Classic entrants from Warren Place, and Richard Quinn paid a penalty for that loyalty. 'During my time with Henry a lot of people simply assumed I wouldn't be available,' he says. 'I am effectively starting again, having lost a lot of contacts.' But it is said matterof-factly. without bitterness.
Even before Ascot, Richard Quinn was insisting, 'Pm riding for some nice people and building up; it's coming together.' So it is, with such astute judges as David Elsworth and John Dunlop putting him up regularly, along of course with Paul Cole. Based at Great Shefforcl, Richard Quinn is always ready to do the homework, going in to ride work for a dozen trainers. I'll always go and sit on a horse to get some background knowledge.' Trainers like it that he is not an enthusiastic user of the whip. He gets his mounts going with a style that leaves the trainer some horse for another day, and they value his assessments. 'There's always tactics involved in every race,' says Quinn. 'You've got to ride them as individuals, and trainers and owners have their preferred way they like a horse to be ridden. But instructions are a game plan; they don't always come off and you've got to be prepared to adapt.'
Plans certainly don't always come off with Norse Dancer. Placed in last year's 2000 Guineas and fourth in the Derby, he has failed to win since his two-year-old days yet lost a string of top races by only the narrowest of margins. This season he looked magnificent at Newbury when running Russian Rhythm close in the Lockinge, and then he flopped once more at Ascot. 'He owes you one,' I suggested to Richard Quinn before that latest effort. To which he retorted, 'He owes everybody one. They've tried him every way, with blinkers and without, with a visor, over different distances and with different jockeys. It's so frustrating for his owner [Jeff Smith] — he is a horse of immense ability.' I only hope Richard Quinn is on Norse Dancer the day that infuriating character does come good and wins the big race he one day really must.
Previous page
