A hero never to be forgotten

I went to Fontwell the other day.

It was my first visit for a long time and I have to say it was a very moderate card, lifted to a degree by a steeplechase final with £20,000 in the kitty at the end. The smart restaurant was packed and the queues waiting to leave the course took a while to clear. This was indeed a meeting for NH devotees.

On a damp and windy day it was good to be reminded of former champions and there is never any problem in that respect at Fontwell because both Salmon Spray and Comedy of Errors are honoured with refreshment outlets named after them.

Those of us of a certain age will never forget the 1966 Champion Hurdle because the brilliant Flyingbolt, arguably at least the equal of famous stable-companion Arkle, was attempting the Champion Chase-Champion Hurdle double in the same year  –  something no other owner or trainer has ever considered, not in the same year anyway.

Flyingbolt might well have managed it, too, but for a crucial mistake late in the piece. He still finished a close third, running on, as Salmon Spray and John Haine took full advantage. The winner was an excellent hurdler in his own right and Haine had few peers over the smaller obstacles. Sadly, a troubled personal life took its toll and he died tragically early.

I was driving along the M4 on the way to Fontwell and thinking about 1970 and one or two things that made it a special year. Tintagel II and Lester winning the Ebor was well up there, of course, so too Nijinsky, who was two-thirds of the way towards his Triple Crown. But my father had died just before the Derby and after graduation I was wandering around London one night, wondering what to do for a living.

I was greatly cheered by a light American comedy called Lovers And Other Strangers, notable for an early screen appearance by Diane Keaton, well before she played Annie Hall. Even more impressive was the greatly underrated actor Gig Young, who played a cheerful paterfamilias whose favourite saying was ‘no gap!’ as if to underline the fact that he was in tune with the younger generation  –  all this as he battled to keep wife and mistress happy on the day of his daughter’s wedding…

I’m frequently amazed by the way actors can brush their own problems aside while concentrating on the job in hand. You can’t imagine a more genial, likeable character than Gig Young, yet in the end he turned a gun on both his wife and himself. Thinking that we know people inside out is a rash assumption indeed.

Anyway, all of these memories came from 1970 and if I’d decided to stay with a Champion Hurdle feature for this column it would have included Persian War, who completed his hat-trick in the big race that year and has been rated the best hurdler of their experience (2lbs behind Night Nurse) by many good judges.

On the car radio on Fontwell day I was playing one of my favourite Gordon Lightfoot tracks Too Late For Prayin’, which dwells on a particularly disappointing and violent period for world affairs. Listening to the lyrics, which I shan’t trouble you with here, it was impossible not to acknowledge that things are even worse now.

But if I’d written about Persian War how many people do you think are aware that Iran was once Persia? Many racehorses carried the ‘Persian’ tag and it was in the Gulf, of course, that John Meacock served in the British Army and learned enough about Persian history to name his horses Vakil-ul-Mulk, Qalibashi and the rest.

Persian War was a great horse who would have been even greater but for the interference of his prickly, unreliable owner Henry Alper. In all the horse had six trainers and it is quite astounding that trainer Colin Davies and jockey Jimmy Uttley were left alone during the great Champion Hurdle years. It’s often forgotten that he finished second at Cheltenham the year after his three triumphs, by which time I’d given up a tiny flat in Earl’s Court (£5 a week, yes) and was sharing a larger place with some old college friends where we played Gordon Lightfoot whenever we felt like it.

I was a graduate trainee at the Jockey Club by then, affording a light and bitter in the Hansom Cab in Earl’s Court and enjoying spaghetti in La Boite, the first in a very long chain of Italian restaurants to claim my meagre disposable income. Needless to say, I was the only punter at Portman Square, everyone else a eunuch in a quiet and respectable brothel.

I like to think I’ve come on a bit since then. I could be wrong, of course.

Ian Carnaby’s books are available to buy on our website by clicking here