HIghs and lows on Epsom Downs

“Don’t really know whether to congratulate or commiserate. Suppose just bad luck on all concerned to be born same century as L Piggott.”

A typically warm response from the late Fred Winter in a sympathetic card to Barry Hills just after Lester and Roberto had inched out Ernie Johnson and Rheingold in the 1972 Epsom Derby. It was the most riveting finish I’ve ever seen, Lester swaying back in the saddle and administering three more rat-a-tat blows like a drummer on speed to force Roberto’s head in front on the line.

Not everyone approved. Today’s contentious whip guidelines are often used to support the view that this last-gasp triumph had been achieved through unfair means. I interviewed Lester on a number of occasions and, whilst I could hardly claim to know him well, I’m pretty sure he’d have treated the argument with his usual casual indifference.

He never felt the need to say the words. If he had, he’d have muttered: ‘Do you want to win or not?’ Any punishment handed down would have had much the same effect as a gnat’s assault on an elephant’s bottom because the result was safe and sound in the papers and the history books. Lester was there to win important races, not engage in arty-farty conversation when the whole thing was done and dusted.

Another Epsom Derby is almost upon us and I find myself going back through the years and recalling moments which were special to me. I’d have to follow with Psidium in 1961. I was only twelve, 66/1 sounded quite an exotic price and we all had to learn how to pronounce winning jockey Roger Poincelet’s name. There were 28 runners and Psidium, who won only twice in his short career, will not go down as one the greatest winners but he lengthened impressively in the final furlong. The old newsreel pictures show a crowd at least four or five deep over on the far side as the field gallops uphill in the early stages. It’s not something we see today.

I agree with those who say that comparisons are odious, especially when it comes to racehorses of different eras, though I’m prepared to state that the four most effortless winners of my experience were Shergar, Nijinsky, Troy and Nashwan.

Mill Reef was just as impressive but this is a column about personal memories and my own situation at the time. I was working for BBC Radio when Secreto and El Gran Senor engaged in their famous battle in 1984. The latter had won the 2000 Guineas so stylishly that he was sent off at 8/11 and with Pat Eddery sitting almost motionless at the furlong pole his supporters must have thought they were looking at a certainty.

But Pat never went for the whip as Christy Roche kept plugging away on Secreto and suddenly it was all going to be on the nod. To the dismay of Vincent O’Brien and a few thousand other supporters it went Christy’s way, though Vincent took pride in the fact that the winner was trained by his son David. Many could not believe what they had just seen and Eddery was roundly criticised by press and public alike.

Not given to lengthy interviews at that stage of his career, Pat explained that he had always harboured doubts about El Gran Senor’s stamina over Epsom’s stiff mile and a half and felt he had to nurse him home. He looked to have a point when this brilliantly gifted individual hacked up in the Irish version a few weeks later; no one would dispute that the Curragh is a less demanding circuit.

My own view is that Eddery’s judgement re stamina was correct but, in holding on to El Gran Senor like that, he obliged Roche to go for everything just in case. Had the favourite nosed ahead the outcome might have been different but we shall never know.

Incidentally, Lester never commented on all the stories about him and his famously dry one-liners, which he predictably tolerated or ignored, but he made an exception when it came to the oft-repeated claim that he murmured ‘Do you miss me?’ to O’Brien when the result was called. “I never said that at all,” he said later. I believe him. In all the interviews I conducted, both on the BBC and SIS, the one comment he made about a fellow jockey was: “Willie went to sleep there,” when Willie Carson was caught close home in a lesser race. The rest of the world already thought so anyway.

Relatively few remember Snow Knight in 1974 but I do. That was the year I spent as a rep, learning about the on-licence trade in pubs and clubs around Hounslow and Isleworth in south-west London. Jimmy Smith, a very likeable and go-ahead publican, ran the Red Lion in Isleworth and was generous to a fault so, even though they were going to Epsom, the stand-in draymen need not have turned up early on Derby morning, banged on the door and, having made their delivery, asked whether he was going to stand them a pint. Tradition says a drink is more or less guaranteed but their attitude irritated Jimmy and he declined.

Although understandable, this was the worst decision he made in his life, unless we include opening the doors at tea-time when they returned, a little the worse for wear. They gave him a hiding and after a spell in hospital he was never quite the same man again. Of course, they were soon picked up by the police and the brewery sacked them on the spot. “You can’t believe it, can you? One of them  had about £300 on him, too,” one of the coppers said. Hmm. Snow Knight and Brian Taylor started at 50/1 and I think I can work out the bet. Why they still needed to hurt someone remains a total mystery.

If we move on twenty years, Erhaab’s Derby is a vivid memory for several reasons. Between jobs I had an interview (unsuccessful) in London and lunched at a favourite place, the Venice restaurant,  on Great Titchfield Street. Four years later, on Musidora day at York, the Sporting Life breathed its last after 137 years and we held the farewell party, a remarkably cheerful affair under the circumstances, at the Venice. Sadly it closed several years later and is an Indian restaurant now.

Anyway, I watched the Derby on a big screen at the Crown and Sceptre, universally known as ‘the Hat and Stick’ on the opposite corner. The ‘Hat’ was quite famous because it was British TV journalist John McCarthy’s destination (‘Have a pint ready for me on the bar!’) when he was abducted on his way to the airport in war-torn Beirut. They kept him hostage for five years and only released him in 1991. It was quite a night in the ‘Hat’ when he finally made it.

The race itself was notable because, at the top of Tattenham Hill, Erhaab couldn’t possibly win, trapped as he was behind a wall of horses. But no one shouts quite like Willie Carson and, as beaten horses dropped back, he miraculously made his way between them and got up to beat King’s Theatre by just over a length.

Fortune favours the brave and sometimes it even favours brave punters. Erhaab was sent off at 7/2 favourite and the pay-out queues stretched almost to the furlong pole. May the gods smile on you this time around; crowds may be down but there is no day quite like it.

Ian