The worst of days

In a small amount of weeks it will be 30 years since I moved to Newmarket.  It was meant just to be for three months, but I'm still here.  Thirty years represent, at this point, 60% of my life, but really the past 30 years almost seem more than that.  Childhood and early adulthood seem to occupy only a very small part of my memory-bank, which is odd as in one's first couple of decades a year is a very long time with plenty in it, while nowadays it's nothing.  Anyhow, 30 years ago I moved here, knowing virtually nobody.  I can only think of three people who currently live in Newmarket whom I knew before moving here.  One of these is Allan Mackay.

Unlikely though this sounds, I rode my horse Black Rod in the Norwegian Grand National at Ovrevoll in Oslo in October 1986, on the same day that Dancing Brave won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp.  That meeting was not only Norway's biggest day of jumping but also of Flat racing, as the card also featured the Oslo Cup.  There were some horses there from Britain and Ireland, Flat and jumps; and some jockeys too.  There were more visiting jumps riders, but also a handful of Flat jockeys from Britain and Ireland.  I remember John Reid being there, riding dear old Gulfland, best remembered for being ridden by Princess Anne in amateurs' races, for Gavin Pritchard-Gordon; and Allan Mackay was riding there too.

Move on seven months, and I moved here.  I was working for Ian Matthews in the second stable down Hamilton Road, Southgate Stables.  Next door, the first stable in the road, was Loder Stables where Eric Eldin trained.  Allan, Eric's son-in-law, was the stable's jockey; and Jimmy Quinn, who had moved down from Malton at the end of the previous year from Pat Rohan, was the apprentice.  I hadn't seen much of Allan at all at Ovrevoll, but the first day I passed Eric's string, he called over, "I know you.  I met you in Oslo.  You rode in the Grand National.  Are you up here now?"  It was remarkable that he remembered me.  Remarkable and hugely appreciated.  I knew nobody and nobody knew me, so a friendly face and a friendly welcome was hugely appreciated, particularly when the friendship and the welcome came from someone whom everyone knew, everyone respected, everyone liked.

Roll on 30 years, and Allan's always been around.  He finally dropped off the public radar when he eventually finished race-riding, but he only did that once he was in his 40s and once his sons Jamie and Nicky, both of whom he had been taking out riding on the Heath as soon as they were in short pants, were established race-riders themselves.  I am sure that there were races in which all three rode.  The race possibly I most remember him riding was the Weatherbys Super Sprint at Newbury when he rode a little Rock City filly called Veesey (who ran OK but finished unplaced) for us down the bottom of the weights. Predictably the other jockeys had weighed out and there was no sign of Allan, which was disconcerting in a big race when there's a big field and you're on a light weight.  As luck would have, it Willie Carson's mount was a non-runner, so he half-heartedly agreed to stand in if Allan didn't appear.  Willie got himself ready and sat on the scales - and then Allan strolled through the doors of the weighing room, 16 minutes before post-time.  No worries.  Allan, ever the master at keeping his head when all around him were losing theirs and blaming it on him.

Anyway, eventually Allan packed in the race-riding, a thousand and one hair-raising stories in the memory bank, stories which with anyone else you wouldn't really believe, but as it was Allan you knew not only that they were true, but that you were probably only getting the toned-down versions of them anyway.  But while Allan's name eventually ceased to be in the papers, for anyone who knew him, and that is pretty much everyone, he has never dropped off the radar.  He's always been there, ever the friend for anyone who needs friendship, ever the giver of a cheery greeting just when you need a smile or a word of comfort, ever the larrikin, ever the wheeler-dealer, ever up to something which only he could be up to, ever doing something which you can hardly believe is true, ever Peter Pan

Funnily enough, about a month ago I took a photograph (which lies in the first paragraph of this chapter) of Allan riding a 12:2 pony on Hamilton Hill, a pony which his 14-year-old daughter was going to ride in a pony race at the end of the following week.  If you didn't know how small Allan is, you might have thought that this was a man on a small horse, rather than a small pony, and I put this picture up on Facebook with a caption purporting that Allan was ripe for a come-back, preparing this 'little two-year-old' for the two-year-olds' seller at the first Musselburgh meeting.  There was, of course, no truth in that report - not that, with Allan, you could ever rule anything out 100% - but tragically now it's even more certain not to be true.

On Saturday morning we heard that the Southfields all-weather, which runs up from the trotting rings past the farm to the Rubbing House, was closed because there had been an accident.  After a while it was still closed and the air ambulance had arrived.  Then it was still closed, and the air ambulance was still there.  It was clearly very serious.  Whoever had been hurt had clearly been hurt very badly.  Eventually the helicopter took off and the canter re-opened.  The world continued to turn, even if the as-yet-unidentified victim of this accident might be finding it turning in a very different way.

We now know that that air ambulance had come for Allan.  As far as I can gather, he had been riding a horse for Michael Wigham in a routine, totally straightforward canter.  The horse apparently stumbled while pulling up, which doesn't sound much.  But then it probably didn't sound much when Brian Taylor's horse stumbled on pulling up after a race in Hong Kong, and that fall killed him.  This fall hasn't killed Allan, but it seems that he has suffered dreadful injuries from the horse knuckling over and landing on him.  He doesn't know about it yet as he is, I believe, still in an induced coma, but when he comes round he will almost certainly find himself facing up to a life very different from the one which he has lived - well, more than lived - for the past 57 years.

There have been too many accidents recently.  Freddy Tylicki and George Baker have both suffered very serious injuries, and now Allan too.  The full extent of the damage will become clearer as the days pass, but it is already clear that they are bad.  It is also clear that the Injured Jockeys' Fund is, as ever, a tower of strength for jockeys and ex-jockeys in their hour of need.  A tower of strength, a tower of kindness, a tower of practical, financial and moral support.  Freddy and George will both have the additional help of the Professional Riders' Insurance Scheme, but Allan, as an ex-jockey, no longer has that safety net.  Happily, he too has the Injured Jockeys' Fund, and will have it for life.  And he has a loving family.  And he has a mountain of good will from thousands of people around the world, people whose paths he has crossed at some point and on whom his larger-than-life personality has made an indelible impression.

Even so - and even allowing for the fact that Allan has spent his whole life doing things which, with any normal person, you just couldn't believe possible - there are some mountains which can't be climbed.  But the IJF will be there for him and with him as he faces the toughest of challenges.  Furthermore, just as when Freddy was hurt, an additional fund has been set up, overseen by the IJF and acting as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the help which the charity will provide anyway.  A fund which will be able to make some small contribution to helping Allan to cope with the devastation to his life which lies ahead.  Furthermore, over and above the practical help which the money will be able to buy, it will be a demonstration that people care, want to help and are doing what they can.  And that in itself will be a massive boost to a good man in his hour of greatest need.

Nonsense

Plenty going on - including, as ever, the weather (largely good and at times very good, although we still aren't totally out of the woods of winter, not that we ever are) - but I might just stick to stuff which I've read in the media.  Michael Rafferty of (I think) Co. Louth, also known as @AnaglogsDaughter, often puts old racing pages up on Twitter, from that same day in the year xxxx.  A couple of days ago he posted the Times' racing page from that day in 1991 which happened to give us an update, written by Richard Evans, on what was then the Levy Board's plan to try to sell Epsom, Sandown and Kempton in the relatively near future.  We've had quite a lot on this subject in this blog this year, but one can never have too much of a bad thing.

Anyway, I'll reproduce some of the article, from which you may glean what you wish: "The Levy Board bought Epsom and Sandown for £1.5 million in 1969 and acquired Kempton a year later for £800,000 to protect them from possible development following the demise of Hurst Park.  The three courses, comprising almost 1,000 acres of prime Green Belt land 15 miles from central London, will be placed on the market in 1992, provided "copper-bottomed" guarantees are obtained to safeguard their future for racing, Sir John Sparrow, Chairman of the Levy Board, said yesterday."

That's straightforward.  What is less straightforward is how the eventual purchaser, which body now rejoices under the name of Jockey Club Racecourses Ltd, feels that it is either ethical or permissible, having bought the courses in a deal whose circumstances are outlined above, now to try to sell one of them for development.  And that's not even touching upon the separate issue of how Jockey Club Racecourses Ltd, a body which claims to exist for the good of racing, can justify attempting to embark upon a course of action which nearly all objective, informed bystanders believe to be bad for racing.

But that's enough of that.  Now for something completely different.  The same racing page contained a separate paragraph which rested under the headline 'Ham fined £500': "Gerald Ham was fined £500 by the Jockey Club yesterday after a prohibited substance, the steroid nandrolone, was found in Travail Girl after the mare had won a selling chase at Fontwell  Park in December".  Gee, Gerald got off lightly!  I know that the use of anabolic steroids was less frowned upon then than it is now (when, as I understand things, even the really big operations have stopped using them) but it was against the rules even then to present a horse on race-day with anabolic steroids in his/her system; and such drugs had been detectable since 1976, a year which marked the beginning of the end of the glory days for several stables which had enjoyed great success up to that point but which suffered an obvious decline shortly afterwards.

So the war against anabolic steroids, which now appears to have been won, was already well under way by 1991.  The precedent had already been set for a trainer to receive a five-figure sum for having a horse test positive for anabolic steroids.  So Gerald receiving a fine of £500 for a positive test for nandrolone?  Well, it is safe to assume that he would not have been tempted to appeal that sentence on the grounds of severity.  'Ham gets the bacon' used to be a head-line writer's dream for a report on a raceday when Gerald had trained a winner.  No doubt he felt that he'd got the bacon when he walked away from Portman Square that day merely £500 poorer.

Which brings us nicely round to our antipodean brethren.  I'm still scratching my head about the explanatory notes which accompanied the verdict when Danny O'Brien and Mark Kavanagh appealed their convictions for presenting horses on race-day with an illegally high cobalt reading.  Rightly or wrongly, the stewards of Racing Victoria had decided that cobalt, if administered in high concentration, is a performance-enhancer, and had consequently made it an offence to present a horse at the races with a reading above a threshold level, a level which could only be exceeded if cobalt had been administered in large doses.

Danny O'Brien and Mark Kavanagh had both had horses test positive to cobalt at levels above this high threshold.  Consequently they were found guilty and given a stiff sentence.  They appealed, and last week we found that the independent court of appeal had upheld their appeals.  It transpired that the dope tests on which their convictions had rested were invalid because the correct procedures had not been followed in their collation. (I think, although I could be wrong on this, that the problem was that the defendants had not been given the choice of which approved laboratory would conduct the confirmatory analysis on the 'B' sample).

That might seem a minor detail, but one could make the same observation regarding our BHA and the perceived conflict of interest resultant from Matthew Lohn sitting in judgement on the Jim Best case.  In this day and age, it is so important that prosecutors do everything by the book; and, as regards dope-testing procedure, doing things by the book is not hard.  It is more than surprising that a supposedly competent regulatory authority could have cocked this up.   Following the correct procedure is not difficult; and failing to do so renders the test-results inadmissible evidence.  Bearing that in mind, it is also hard to fathom how a supposedly competent regulatory authority could have gone through with a prosecution for an alleged doping misdemeanour without being able to present evidence of a failed dope test.  Not having a dope test means that there is no case, and the appeal had to be upheld.  The whole thing makes the BHA's Matthew Lohn cock -up look good.

But the really weird thing was that the appeal board gave a second reason for upholding the appeal.  This was so odd, both for the fact that it didn't need to do so (one was enough) and because the second one was not only otiose but also bollocks.  The second reason was that, although it was established that the source of the extremely high concentrations of cobalt was a treatment which the trainers had had their vet give to the horses, it had not been proven that the trainers knew that this treatment was cobalt-rich.

What is all that about?  It would be a different matter if high cobalt levels had been found and nobody could understand how the cobalt had got there.  But that wasn't the case: the source was established, and the source was a treatment which the vet gave to the horse under the trainer's instruction.  Since when did, "Don't blame me - how was I to know what was in the drug?  I didn't read the list of ingredients" become any kind of excuse at all?  If that was the principle in use in Britain, Gerald Butler probably couldn't have been convicted for his horse testing positive to Sungate, bearing in mind that the only trainer who told me that he had used Sungate told me that he had done so not realising that it contained an anabolic steroid, and had merely used it on the suggestion of his vet who had produced it and suggested that it might work.

(Which it didn't - the horse in question never raced and was never dope-tested.  And the trainer in question is no longer a trainer.  I feel that I ought to add that footnote just in case anyone feels that there is an investigation here to be undertaken, which there isn't).  But the long and short of it is that one has to feel that one is on a very slippery slope if the onus is on the prosecutor to prove that the person who has given/taken the drug had read the list of ingredients.  That's impossible.  And ludicrous.  If you're a trainer and you decide a horse should have this or that medication, you are responsible. And if you are too lazy to read the ingredients, then you deserve all that's coming to you.  To suggest otherwise, as the Victorian appeal board (quite unnecessarily and irrelevantly) appears to have done, is nonsense.  Just plain nonsense.  Like the Kempton scam.

Brighton ahoy!

I've got a relatively quiet week, which is rather pleasant.  I'm reasonably up to date with my accounts (although, of course, I need to start getting myself organised for the change from one financial year to the next) and I don't have much writing to do (which, of course, is a mixed blessing at best).  And in the stable we are relatively unpressured, not least because I think that we shall be having something like a four-week lull between runners.  Kilim (pictured after the race with Franny Norton - and it was very good of him to come and ride her in a Class Six race on a Saturday evening as she was his only ride) ran adequately at Wolverhampton on Saturday night, fifth beaten 3.5 lengths; but really I think that we're banging our heads against a sand wall with her, which means waiting for a race on the grass, which in her case means waiting until the first week of May.  Before then I hope that So Much Water (possibly at Brighton, believe it or not!) and Roy will run some time in April.

It just appears to be the case that pretty much all AW races now are slowly-run.  This means that there's no point in running horses such as Roy (pictured in this paragraph on Sunday; the subsequent photos were all taken today, and one can see Roy's ears in the first of them) or Kilim, ie hard-pulling horses who can't run well unless they can be switched off and persuaded not to put everything into the first half of the race, and who won't switch off unless they are buried away behind horses.  You have a chance of burying the horse away just behind the leaders if you're drawn low, but if you're drawn wide - forget it: you have to take back.

We had tried going forward and slotting in with Kilim two starts previously when she was drawn 10 at Lingfield, but it completely failed: she couldn't slot in, pulled fiercely for two thirds of the race and finished completely tailed off.  (Well, to be exact, I see that she was beaten 28 lengths, which on the Flat is pretty much the same thing).  In her two subsequent runs at Wolverhampton we've taken her back and she's run well (beaten 1.5 lengths into fourth and 3.5 lengths into fifth) but really, on the AW, that's nowadays seemingly just a recipe for continually running well without winning.

The good thing on Saturday was that, covered up, she did relax acceptably well.  (Typically well ridden by Franny).  But even Wolverhampton now is a write-off from our point of view.  I always used to find that it was the one AW track where the races were run at a tempo similar to that of races on the turf (I used to put it down to the fact that, because the straight is so short, the jockeys didn't wait until the straight before quickening up, as they do elsewhere, but would wind it up from the start of the back straight, as they do at the almost-identically-configured Chester) but that's no longer the case.

I would say that over the years I've trained as many winners at Wolverhampton (most of them ridden by Franny, funnily enough) as at all the other AW tracks put together, but I hadn't woken up until Saturday night to the seeming fact that the goalposts have moved.  I was talking at the races to Stuart Williams who has a lot more AW runners than I do (in fact, he has a lot more runners full stop than I do) and he observed that it has been virtually impossible to make up significant ground in nearly all the races at Wolverhampton this winter, that he has had a few runners there whom he has had ridden back in the field, and that they have all run disappointingly.

I saw Adam Kirby interviewed on ATR by Robert Cooper at Lingfield a couple of weeks ago after riding a winner, and he passed on the observation that over the past year the AW has changed a lot to the extent that nearly all AW races now are slowly run.  So that's fine - but it just means that horses who need to be taken back in the field might as well sit the winter out.  That includes Roy, whom I'd love to keep going at Kempton over the winter except that we gave him one run there in the autumn after Brighton had finished for the year, and that reminded us that there really isn't any point.  And it also seems to include Kilim.

And (who knows?) as Brighton works for Roy, perhaps it might work for her too.  So I hope that her next race will be there, on either 2nd or 3rd May.  There are two Brighton meetings in April and I hope that Roy will run at one of those; but nowadays although the turf season still starts at the Lincoln meeting (in April this year, strangely, rather than March) that presages merely a phoney war as the bulk of the racing, particularly for low-grade horses, is still on the AW for the first month or so of the new campaign.

Water, water everywhere before the watershed

Ah, the Cheltenham Spring Carnival.  You've probably heard and read more than enough about it, but I think that we ought to highlight the water/heat nonsense.  This isn't actually merely nonsense: it's dangerous nonsense.  Basically, ITV were going on both yesterday and today about the supposed dangers of racing horses in extreme heat, giving the impression that yesterday's high of 16 degrees is bordering on lethal for horses.  They weren't actually doing this out of devilment, but because they wanted to highlight what a supposedly wonderful job Cheltenham are doing to combat this supposedly serious problem.  But basically it's just nonsense.  Dangerous nonsense.

Once temperatures get over 40 degrees one might start to be concerned; and really I'm not that happy a about staging National Hunt racing (longer races, higher weights ...) over 30 degrees.  (Although nobody else seems too worried about that as I'm seemingly the lone voice crying in the wilderness about summer jumping, which everyone else seems to think is marvellous, being an abomination).  But 16 degrees?  Come on!  Edwulf got into difficulties at the end of the National Hunt Chase, but that was on Tuesday when it wasn't particularly warm.  Many Clouds dropped down dead at the end of race at Cheltenham in January, but I don't remember that being a hot day.  Rather a cold day, in fact, if I remember rightly.  For jumps racing in winter, heat just isn't an issue, and shouldn't be treated as such.

Yesterday we kept hearing about what a wonderful job Cheltenham were doing to help the participants combat the heat.  We had the special cool area under the trees (about four spindly little mini-trees standing lonely, with not a leaf on a single branch) which was just complete nonsense.  And we had Nico de Boinville falling off Might Bite when someone presumably employed by the racecourse threw a bucketful of water over the horse.  To illustrate just what a joke this was, when Might Bite (reunited with his jockey) made his way to the winner's enlclosure, another racecourse employee produced a sponsor's sheet for him to wear to keep him warm.  And the trainers of most of the other runners, who weren't obliged to turn their charges into advertising hoardings, seemed to be electing to put sheets on their horses too, to keep them warm.

I could probably have let this one go through to the keeper (and I shouldn't because it is dangerous nonsense, the consequence of which - and I know because this does happen - is that you go to the races in mild weather and have members of the public, who know nothing on the subject other than what some idiot on the TV once told them, berating you and telling you that you should be throwing water on your horses all the time) but we returned to the subject today with ITV's technology giving us a heat-highlighted film of a horse having water thrown on him, which supposedly told us how important that it was to do this.  And this straw broke this particular camel's back.

This told us nothing of the sort, of course.  And the ITV presenters, of course, conveniently forgot to say that the faces of the humans came up the same shade of red as the horses' skins, and yet nobody was saying that the humans were so critically hot that their lives would be at risk unless someone gave them a cold dowsing.  Just complete bulls*it.  But it did come with a compensation, as the first photograph in this chapter illustrates.  Wonderful.  Just wonderful.  I didn't create this, but a (male, obviously) friend managed to capture this image from the TV.  Never mind water, water everywhere - what about the watershed, and the masterstroke of getting delicious soft porn like this on national TV before the 9pm watershed?  All is forgiven.

Otherwise, we have had three days of Cheltenham, and the seven handicaps so far have produced four Irish-trained winners and three English-trained winners.  One of the Irish-trained winners was the horse who, of all the horses in all the handicaps at the meeting, had supposedly been the most unfairly treated, ie Presenting Percy.  So I hope that that will have ensured that the 'It's not fair ... we Irish are being picked on ..." whinge has been put to bed.  What hasn't been put to bed is the declaration time for the Grade One races.

Flat racing has 48-hour declarations (which I prefer) but jumping (for generally valid reasons) still has 24-hour declarations.  However, it is standard for big races over jumps, including normally all Grade One races, to have 48-hour decs.  And not just the Grade Ones: the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter, for instance, has 48-hour decs.  But at Cheltenham?  Some of the Grade One races do; some don't.  There were four Grade One races on the first day.  Two (the Champion Hurdle and the Mares' Hurdle) were 48-hour; two (the Supreme Novices' Hurdle and the Arkle Chase) were 24-hour.  On Friday the Gold Cup is 48-hour and the Triumph Hurdle is 24-hour.  How on earth was this cock-eyed non-system devised.  Some ... not all ... not none.  Some.  Common sense says that they all should be 48-hours, but it would actually be less nonsensical to have none of them 48-hours than merely some of them.  Or am I missing something?

Second-hand news

Two days down from Cheltenham, two to go.  Surprisingly, my tips from the Preview Evening at the Racing Centre aren't going too disastrously (ie don't look any worse than most other people's).  Special Tiara EW as the bet on the drying ground in the Champion Chase looks OK.  My highlight of the Cheltenham Festival so far has been the sick-making pre-race hyperbole on ITV of the supposed invincibility of the supposed super-horse Douvan being followed post-race by Matt telling us that his defeat wasn't actually that surprising as the word from the Mullins stable (which, unless I was making a cup of tea at the time, they had all forgotten to mention before the race) had been that he had been working badly.  My highlight so far has been the ultra-brave win of lovely Apple's Jade, who is just about my favourite National Hunt horse currently in training.

The main feature in my calendar so far this week, though, has not been watching racing (or even enjoying the lovely weather) but attending Brian Procter's funeral and wake yesterday afternoon/evening.  In one sense it is silly to refer to such a thing as 'a good funeral' but in another sense it isn't.  If it is acceptable to use such a phrase, then yesterday was a time to do so.  Sadness prompted the occasion, but basically the occasion was an opportunity to spend time with good people sharing memories of a good person.

Marcus Tregoning gave a lovely eulogy revolving around reflections from West Ilsley, and one came away reflecting that Brian had lived a good life and had earned respect and affection from all whose paths he crossed.  And, really, no man can ask for more than that.  I used my column in 'Al Adiyat' (the weekly racing magazine in the UAE) last week to pay tribute to him and to John Powney, and I reproduce it below.  Hence the title of this chapter, prompted by the fact that we've been watching a lovely 'Classic Albums' series on the TV, and the last one which we watched focused on Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours'.  As previously, not all the photographs are mine: the last two are stolen from an old Sporting Life, so I hope that the photographers don't mind.

TWO GOOD MEN GONE

This column has been spending too much time in the past recently.  At the start of last week I made a resolution that this time we would discuss something current.  The Cheltenham Festival, perhaps.  (And, why not?  Everyone else does, until the cows come home).  But then two of the nicest people in my home town (Newmarket) died.  And when the bell tolls for people like these, it tolls for all of us.

The world keeps turning.  Today’s big stories become yesterday’s news, until eventually they get lost in the mists of time.  It’s the same with people.  One doesn’t have to put it quite as bluntly as Robin Williams’ character John Keating in ‘Dead Poets Society’, whose advice to his pupils was “Carpe Diem” (‘Seize the day!’) because eventually we shall all be “food for worms”.  Instead, one can merely reflect on Bart Cummings’ wry observation that a man could be “an institution one minute, and the next he’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

In retrospect and viewed from a distance of nearly half a century, that could be case with David Robinson, England’s biggest racehorse owner in the late 1960s and early ‘70s but rarely mentioned nowadays.  David Robinson was one of Britain’s commercial titans of the post-war era, riding the wave of the popularisation of television with his company Robinson Rentals (which he eventually sold, in 1968, to Granada for £8,000,000).  Nowadays televisions are relatively inexpensive, but until the 1970s they were very dear.  Consequently, many people preferred to hire, rather than buy, them.  Many of those who took that option did so through Robinson Rentals, and the company’s founder consequently made a fortune.

What set David Robinson apart from many tycoons was that, having made his money, he chose to put it to good use, rather than to hoard it.  He hailed from Cambridge and he loved racing.  And he used his money locally.  He donated £18,000,000 (and those were in the days when a million was a million, rather than a down-payment on a flat in the East End) to Cambridge University to found its newest college, Robinson College.  He gave £3,000,000 to found the Rosie Maternity Hospital in Cambridge (named after his mother) which is now part of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, as anyone from Newmarket who has become a parent knows.

David Robinson (who became Sir David Robinson in 1985, two years before his death) also devoted his attention to racing, buying both Clarehaven and Carlburg, adjacent properties in Newmarket’s Bury Road which are now occupied by John Gosden and Roger Varian respectively.  He employed Michael Jarvis (who had been head lad to Gordon Smyth in Sussex and who had led up the 1966 Derby winner Charlottown) and Paul Davey (whose father Ernie trained in Yorkshire) as his principal private trainers.  For a few years he was the country’s most successful owner.  His best horse was My Swallow, an outstanding colt who had the misfortune to be born in the same year as both Brigadier Gerard and Mill Reef; while his other stars included the top-class sprinters So Blessed, Deep Diver and Green God, as well as Meadowville, runner-up in 1970 to Nijinsky in both the Irish Derby and the St Leger.

David Robinson’s trainers also included at various times Bruce Hobbs (who subsequently became very successful as a public trainer), Bob Smart (who had previously trained in a small way in Yorkshire) and John Powney.  The latter had preceded his appointment by working as head lad for both Sam Armstrong and Tom Jones.  During the two years that he trained for David Robinson, John Powney tended to be sent the lesser lights; and it was a similar case subsequently when he became a public trainer in Saville House Stables in St Mary’s Square.

After finishing training, John Powney worked on studs; and in retirement he was a regular fixture at both the National Horseracing Museum and Tattersalls.  In the museum, he guided visitors with his special blend of friendliness, courtesy, knowledge, experience and enthusiasm.  If you ever visited the museum in recent years in its site in the High Street (from which it moved last year to its new National Heritage Centre premises in Palace House) you may well have met John - or you may have seen cycling into town from his cottage in the Bury Road.  You would also have met him if you had bought a horse in Tattersalls and collected the horse yourself.  For years John manned the control office at Park Paddocks during sales weeks, his blend of efficiency and amiability ensuring that the potentially fraught process of making sure the right horses went in the right directions ran like a well-oiled machine.

Sadly John Powney died two weeks ago, aged 87.  Newmarket thus lost one of its senior figures and most loved and respected characters.  Additionally, we have also lost a link to the David Robinson era, a special chapter in the town’s (and British racing’s) rich and varied story.

Last week we lost another great racing man when Brian Procter passed away aged 75.  While John Powney was a Newmarket man from the cradle to the grave, Brian Procter only spent his final couple of decades here.  However, that was long enough for him to become part of the town’s furniture.

Brian Procter’s working life lasted a good 55 years, but he only ever had three employers.  In fact, one could almost say that he only ever had two jobs as his first flowed seamlessly into his second.  He joined Sir Gordon Richards from school, served his apprenticeship in the stable of the former multiple champion jockey, and stayed on until that legend retired from the training ranks in 1970.  Lady Beaverbrook’s horses and the Ballymacoll Stud horses owned by Sir Michael Sobell and his son-in-law Arnold Weinstock moved to Dick Hern’s stable at West Ilsley; and Procter went with them, staying there until Hern eventually retired in the early ‘90s. 

During his years working for Dick Hern, Brian Procter became a living legend.  He served as second jockey behind firstly Joe Mercer and then Willie Carson, achieving a status far more exalted than his totals of winners might suggest.  Although that was not long ago, it seems like another era.  Major Hern could be viewed as one of the last great ‘old-school’ trainers, concentrating on quality rather than quantity, running his stable along strict military lines, insisting on the highest of standards at all times.  He did not suffer fools at all, gladly or otherwise – so the fact that he clearly held Brian Procter in the highest regard speaks volumes.  The jockey became a byword for horsemanship, courage, loyalty and reliability.

So synonymous was Brian Procter with West Ilsley, and so much of an anachronism had Major Hern’s painstaking professionalism and attention to detail become, that it was hard to think of a stable where the jockey, by now in his 50s, could work without feeling that he had come down in the world.  Happily, a solution presented itself: Sheikh Mohammed offered him a job as a work-rider for the Godolphin string in Saeed bin Suroor’s stable.  This was a match made in heaven: he was perfect for Godolphin, and Godolphin was perfect for him.

Thus Brian Procter, having been synonymous with the Berkshire Downs, became a Newmarket man during his final couple of decades.  For those of us who like to think that we can ride adequately, he unwittingly provided a salutary reality check: riding out daily until the age of 70, he was plainly not only the oldest rider on the Heath, but also the best.  When you passed the Godolphin string on the Heath, it was like, if you fancy yourself as a bit of a runner, having Sir Roger Bannister lope past you in the park every morning.  For those of us lucky enough to make his acquaintance, the further joy was the discovery that he was every bit as decent, kind, friendly, modest and humble a human being as one would have hoped him to be.  Sir Mark Prescott often dispenses the wise advice that one should try not to meet one’s heroes, because it usually leads to disappointment.  Thankfully, Brian Procter was the glorious exception to this generally sound rule.

As the world keeps turning and time keeps passing, so do all good things come to an end.  The loss of John Powney and Brian Procter, two good men who were lifelong adornments to the sport which they loved and which they served so well, leaves racing poorer for their absence.  It behoves us to cherish their memories and to recall the parts which they played in some great chapters of racing’s rich history.

Time reveals all

Gosh, some days this training game seems incredibly hard.  I thought that Hymn For The Dudes was certain to run well at Chelmsford on Saturday night.  He didn't.  He ran extremely badly.  Two furlongs from home the race looked between him and the eventual winner as they were the only two horses travelling easily; 100 metres later it was clear that he was going to finish out the back.  I've rarely seen a horse stop so quickly.  Bloody frustrating - but, then again, no lives were lost; plus we're already hardened to disappointment.  Days like Saturday, though, make the rare days when things go right seem all the more special - even if I've never been lucky (or skilled) enough to have a day go as right as today went for Chris Gordon, who ran five horses (which will be a fair proportion of his whole stable) and they all won.  It's hard enough at our level to win one race in a day, never mind five.  Superb.

Aside from our disappointing trip to Chelmsford, things haven't been too bad.  The weather is really bucking up, and bucking us up too.  Today was very pleasant, and the place is really drying up too.  The forecast for (at least) the next three days is similarly good, so we can say that spring is here.  The weather really is a big factor in one's enjoyment or otherwise of life when one is working in a stable - I always say that the weather is both the best part and the worst part of the job - so it really provides a massive fillip when it comes good.

Aside from that, we have Cheltenham to enjoy.  Thanks to having been on the panel for a Cheltenham Preview in the Racing Centre (ie New Astley Club) last night and having thus done some homework to prepare for that, I am reasonably au fait with what is likely to be running (as far as one can be in an era when, thanks to the Festival having too many races, it is impossible to predict what races some of the good horses will be running in until, in some cases, the runners are cantering to post).  Regarding the handicaps, Neil, I think that we had better just wait to see who wins what before drawing any firm conclusions re the fairness of things.  Basically, in each race we shall find that one horse turns out to have been better handicapped than all the others.

The likelihood is that some will be GB-trained and some will be Ire-trained.  It is, though, not quite as simple as saying if a horse has a higher rating in one country than another, he has been unfairly treated in that country: the two lists are completely separate, and they don't necessarily even run in parallel.  That would be like saying that because the BHA handicap list, the Racing Post ratings list and the Timeform ratings list might between them have a horse on three different ratings, two of the three must be wrong.  In fact, all of them could be correct, just as all could be wrong.  Time, as always, will reveal all.  By the way, to honour Danehill Dancer (an excellent sire of racehorses, sires and broodmares who sadly died today) I have included a photograph of him as a two-year-old in November 1996 in his box at Rathmoy Stables with my friends Michael Tidmarsh (who was Neville Callaghan's head lad at the time) and Richard Sims.  Happy memories, eh - and weren't we all so much younger then?