Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 28 July 2025

I was saddened to read that Alan Bailey died last week at the age of 86.

Although I hadn’t seen Alan for a few years, we became friends when he trained a filly for our racing club named Timelee.

She made her debut in a 6f maiden at Thirsk and was expected to need the experience, but to our great surprise she battled on gamely to win by a head under Allan Mackay, unsupported at 14/1.

It was the August Bank holiday and we had the club members up in the Lakes for the weekend’s racing at Cartmel and that Friday evening, having been at Thirsk to see the filly run, I had the ignominy of having to walk into the restaurant to face the assembly of aggrieved owners.

Alan turned up later and saved the show delivering a stand-up routine which would have been well received by the notoriously demanding patrons of the Glasgow Empire, gag after gag peppered with anecdotes from his days as senior work rider for Peter Walwyn.

He was a natural and in no time at all had the club members eating out of his hand, with the missed opportunity at Thirsk lost amidst the gales of laughter.

But that apart, before setting up as a trainer Alan was renowned as one of the best work riders in the business. It was an open secret that he marked bookmaker John Banks’s card with information about Peter Walwyn’s  two-year-olds. Walwyn was twice champion trainer, in

1974 and 1975, sending out Humble Duty to win the 1000 Guineas, Polygamy to win the Oaks and the mighty Grundy to win the 1975 Derby.

Yet despite being associated with those great names, Alan told me the best horse he ever sat on was Lunchtime … “the only horse to send a tingle down my spine.”

He said “you couldn’t judge pace on him. If you sat four lengths behind in a piece of work you would go to move up and in a few strides be six lengths clear.” He won the Dewhurst in 1972 but he was found to have a bad heart and didn’t train on.

However despite his association with those great names, the horse for whom he had the greatest fondness was Be Hopeful, who died in a freak accident at the age of 14.

“I sobbed like a baby”, he told me.”I came into the house for breakfast minutes after he was put down. He broke a leg on the shavings gallops. I rode him every day. I used to go into his box and say … ‘you old bastard Hoppy’ … his ears flat back as we chased each other around in circles. I could do anything with him. One of the first things my daughter learnt to say was ‘Come on Hoppy’. He used to go home every winter and come back covered in cow muck and mud. It hung around him like the coat of a grizzly bear.”

“We had muck sacks in those days and one day he grabbed it off me and I went arse over tit. I could swear he was laughing when I looked around at him. That horse could do everything but talk.”

Bailey left the room, tears welling up, and returned with a smartly varnished hoof bearing a plaque with the name Be Hopeful.

“The owner Mrs Williams gave me that. Not even the money they pay for those yearlings would be enough to buy that off me.”

A great man once said ‘you may forget what someone did, you may forget what someone said but you’ll never forget how they made you feel.’

Thank you Alan. Wherever you are now, they’ll be plenty of laughs along the way.

Bye for now

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