Another good man gone

Very sad news this morning when my father called me to let me know that his friend Peter Bailey had had a heart attack and died during the night.  He and my father were very good friends for many decades, while Peter was very kind indeed to me and played a very big part in my becoming addicted to the sport.  Peter was still training in Sparsholt, near Wantage, when I was first lucky enough to be taken to his stable, but it was after he had moved to Wilsford-cum-Lake, near Amesbury, that I got to know him, his stable, his horses and his staff much better.

I didn't finally leave school until I was eighteen and a half as I did A-levels and then stayed on another term to do the Oxbridge exam, and for the final couple of years I was champing at the bit to start work in a stable.  Thanks to the kindness of Peter and his wife Jane, I was able to assuage my impatience to a fair extent and also to begin my racing education as they went well beyond the call of duty in having me to stay on a few occasions in the holidays and in breaks from school, putting up with me (and I'm not being modest - I would have taken a lot of putting up with at that time) both as a house-guest and also as a liability with and on the horses.

I should have been a good rider by that time as I had been riding ponies for long enough, but I wasn't.  Even so, Peter managed to find a few horses sensible enough not to take too much advantage of my incompetence.  The first of them provided me with a particular thrill: the first racehorse I ever rode was rather a special one, Prince Rock, winner of many good long-distance steeplechases including one which I particularly remember, the four-mile Bass Steeplechase at Cheltenham one New Year's Day, which I remember watching on the BBC and seeing Ian Watkinson have to push him just about every inch of the way.

Having Prince Rock introduce me to riding racehorses was not the only 'first' which Peter provided for me.  He was also the first person to let me 'school' over hurdles - and 'school' is very loosely used here, the lesson on that occasion being provided by the horse to his passenger, rather than vice versa.  The horse (I am pretty sure it was Prince Rock again) was giving a double lesson that day: to his luggage and to the inexperienced horse whom he was accompanying.  You can probably understand how thrilled his schoolboy-rider was by that treat, not least because the rider on the young horse (Richard Linley) had ridden the Champion Hurdle winner only a few weeks previously.

I know that 'things ain't what they used to be' (including nostalgia) but I don't need rose-tinted spectacles to revisit my stays with Peter and Jane, and their son Edward.  They were wonderfully happy times (for me, anyway, although I suspect I detracted from, rather than added to, my hosts' enjoyment of life).  Everyone was so kind to me, going well beyond the call of duty to help me to learn (a small portion of the huge amount of) what I needed to learn.  Head lad Ken Pickersgill, travelling head lad Frank 'Fred' McKevitt and jockey Chris Gwilliam spring immediately to mind.  I will be forever grateful for their kindness and patient tuition.

I subsequently rode in three races on horses trained by Peter.  The first two were on the horse my father bred and owned, Play The Knave.  He won several races over both hurdles and fences, and was good enough to finish third or fourth the two times I rode him, in amateur steeplechases at Chepstow and Worcester.  I suspect that he would have run better with a better rider both times, but Peter, typically, was kind enough to give no hint of harbouring any thoughts along those lines.  I was subsequently honoured to be asked to ride another horse for him one Easter Monday (and that was when there were many more meetings on Easter Monday than there are now, meaning that people holding some sort of license or permit to ride in National Hunt races were spread very thin) in a novice chase at Huntingdon, who I think finished third.  I don't think that I let him down that day.  I hope not, anyway.

The last time I saw Peter was at a Kempton AW meeting a few years ago.  (Strange but true, as he only ever had the odd Flat runner and, I would guess, never trained a runner on the AW - although, funnily enough, one of his most famous winners was on the Flat at Kempton: Scorched Earth, enabling Meriel Tufnell to become the first woman to ride a winner on the Flat under Jockey Club rules in Great Britain - one for your next trivia quiz).  He had finished training by this time and was there as he owned a share in a horse trained by John Dunlop who was running.  As always, he was kindness itself.  Just a lovely, very kind man.

Peter trained some very good horses and won some very big races.  The strength of his stable had already started to decline by the time that I was spending time in it but some of the most special horses in the first few years that I was following racing had been trained by him, many of them owned by Michael Buckley (not that you'd immediately know it, as they were racing in his old black and white quartered colours, which are no longer in use).  Hennessy winner Strombolus and Whitbread winner Zeta's Son were among the best, along with many other good horses including Canasta Lad, Casamayor, Skryne and dear old Prince Rock.  Peter's passing is the passing of a trainer who occupies a big chapter in the history of National Hunt racing.  It is also the passing of one of the nicest and kindest men I have been lucky enough to know.  Condolences to his loved ones.