by Dick Francis
Of Lester's suspension on Never Say Die, Ken says, "It was extremely unfair. A most wicked decision. I was there. I was particularly watching Rashleigh because he was owned by Charles Stuart who had originally owned Zucchero, and I clearly saw Gordon pull across to close the gaps. He took the next horse (Garter) with him onto Lester while Lester was making his move forward, and it wasn't Lester's fault that the horses bumped."
When Lester was reinstated, Ken put him up again straightaway, and was moved when Iris Piggott came across to him at the races and thanked him for his faith. There had been no question of anything else, in Ken's mind.
"Not only did horses go well for him," Ken says, "but he would come back afterwards and give you a sensible opinion. His judgment and understanding were most useful, extraordinary in a boy so young. He rode all those good horses for me, Tancred, Cool Shamrock, Longstone, March Past .... The first time he rode March Past, he amused me by telling me he thought the horse might win a seller. He didn't know March Past wasn't fit and was just out for a run."
March Past's wins included the Solario Stakes at Sandown, the Greenham at Newbury and the Wokingham at Royal Ascot, and eventually he became great at stud, siring, among others, Queen's Hussar, the sire of Brigadier Gerard.
Ken was a trainer who liked to bet, relying on his winnings for income. It was a common practice in very many stables for horses to run unfit (a practice fined into virtual extinction nowadays) so that they could come bursting out highly-tuned later to win at long odds.
Lester says, "Ken Cundell hated to talk to the Press. He'd never tell them anything.
He thought they would spoil the market for him, which they did. He used to ask me to ride and say, `Don't tell the Press,' so there would be a blank against the jockey's name in the papers. You can't do that now, of course.
"He was a good trainer, very clever. Zucchero was a great horse. He would have won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes easily but for his stubbornness at the start, and any horse that can win that race has to be great."
Noel Murless in his young days rode as a jump jockey, chiefly as an amateur but for one year as a professional. Too big and too heavy to continue, he turned to training in Hambleton near Thirsk, in Yorkshire. From there, he moved to Beckhampton in Wiltshire, taking over the stables of the legendary Fred Darling during the latter's failing health, and from there to Newmarket, improving in skill all the way.
When Sir Gordon Richards retired, in 1954, Noel started negotiations for the services of another senior jockey, which pleased his owners well enough except for the Aga Khan. "The old Aga," Noel says, "wanted a good young jockey, either Lester or Manny Mercer. He wouldn't have an older one. Gordon (who was setting up as a trainer at Ogbourne in Wiltshire) wanted Lester also, but I'm glad to say he decided to come to me, fortunately. He was only eighteen at the time, but he was already an accomplished jockey."
Noel and Lester were always on very friendly and relaxed terms although, Noel says, "He was always respectful. He still is, couldn't be more so. He's very modest, as you know."
I asked Noel what he thought of Lester's suspensions, those that occurred after Never Say Die. He replied, "For many years, Lester had a rough deal from the Stewards.
They were always after him for stupid little things. In those days they were more autocratic than they are now.
"I remember him riding Primera here at Newmarket in the Princess of Wales Stakes.
It was a very close thing, and as they were approaching the winning post, Lester hit him just once. Anyway, some time after the race, my travelling head-lad came to me and said the Stewards had ordered Primera to be taken out of the horse-box into which he'd been loaded for the journey home, because they wanted to examine him. I was blazing because, coming down the ramp, he could have hurt himself. It's always a risk. They had an enquiry with Lord Derby in the chair, and he went on about the whip mark on the horse, but I pointed out that at that time of the year (mid-summer), young horses' coats mark so easily you can mark them with your finger when they're hot and steaming like that. That's the sort of thing Lester had to put up with a lot in his early days.
"I don't think it had any effect on his riding, but it affected him mentally for a time, and I think it's very much one of the reasons why he won't converse with people."
A steady diet of injustice, one might say, inhibits the tongue.
I asked Noel about Lester's riding, and any races he particularly remembered. He replied, "Like Gordon, Lester is an absolute genius, but very different. If you put Gordon on a highly-strung horse, it was like putting an electric battery on top, they'd get really worked up. But Lester's very relaxed himself, therefore his mounts relaxed too.
"One race which stands out in my mind is Carrozza's Oaks. She came round Tattenham Corner tucked in behind. Then the opportunity presented itself and Lester grabbed it with both hands by picking the filly up and shooting her through all the opposition. He came through on the inside and rode a fantastic race on her. He always knew just when to make his effort and he knew exactly where the winning post was.
"I don't recall him losing any race, certainly not one of any importance, which he should have won. A lot of people blamed him for losing the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Petite Etoile, but I certainly didn't. She didn't get a mile and a half very well. As the race was run, if he had stuck to the inside, trailing Aggressor, he might perhaps have won, but in my way of thinking he did exactly the right thing in bringing his mount to the outside.
"She was never the same mare after she'd had the cough the next year. We were forced to keep her on and run her at five because Prince Aly Khan had died and the family wanted to encourage the young Aga to be keen on racing. She was very difficult to train at five. She was a right monkey at the best of times, but of course Lester knew her to absolute perfection.
"He was pretty good on any course, but he was marvellous round Epsom because he had the pattern absolutely fixed in his mind. He knew exactly where he'd got to be at any moment, and he was there. If the horse was good enough, well, he'd come on and win. He did that everywhere, but it was more apparent at Epsom."
I asked Noel if he remembered anything amusing which happened between Lester and the owners.
He laughed, and said, "I remember when Lester was riding a horse for old Colonel Giles Loder at Brighton one day, in Lester's first year with us. Old Loder was a steward there and he was having this conversation with Lester and neither could hear what the other was saying. I said, `Come on, Lester, get up,' and he said, `What was Colonel Loder saying to me?' I replied, Òh, never mind about that, just get up.' Anyway, the horse won the race and the old man was of course delighted, and said to me, `Lester did just what I told him to, exactly!'
"Another time, Lester rode a horse for Prince Aly in France and he had a bit of trouble with one of those French jocks. They got to using their whips on each other, instead of on their horses. Lester gave him a couple of right cracks and there was a bit of a row about it at Chantilly. The next week at Ascot, he was riding one for the Queen which I was running. As the Queen was walking away after our pre-race chat in the parade ring, she turned to wish Lester a good ride in the race. Lester asked me, `What did the Queen say to me?' I said, `She said, you aren't to bugger the French jockeys about.' So with a perfectly straight face he just said, Àll right, I won't touch 'em this week.' He has a great sense of humour, in a quiet way."
Inevitably, finally, I asked Noel how he'd felt when Lester left, and how it had happened.
Noel said, "Lester came up to the house one night at the end of 1965 and said he'd like to go freelance. I said I felt he owed it to everyone to carry on with the stable, and of course he did, mostly, until the 1966 Oaks. But, looking back, I think my attitude was wrong. He was quite entitled to go freelance, and I'm sure now he did the right thing. Strangely enough, we both had our best years immediately afterwards.
"I felt that with the horses I had there, I had to have a stable joc
key, so that's why we got George Moore over from Australia. But racing was never the same to me, quite, after Lester and I split up. It was very easy before. We knew each other so well. It was a great shame really, but there we are, it happened. I think if Lester had stayed with us through 1967, we could have won all five Classics."
The tone of Noel's voice when he speaks of Lester is affectionate and humorous, tinged a little with regret but more with pride. They were easy together and a great team. "It was a fantastic thing for me as a trainer," he says, "to have first Gordon Richards and then Lester Piggott."
Of the many other very good British trainers Lester rode for often during the Murless years and beyond, he would class among the most rewarding from his own point of view people like Helen Johnson Houghton, Jeremy Tree, Freddy Maxwell, Barry Hills, and Pat Rohan, people he could rely on for steady bread and butter and frequent jam.
One must mention particularly Susan's father, Fred (Sam) Armstrong, an exceedingly nice man as well as a highly efficient trainer. At one point, both he and Noel Murless trained in Middleham in Yorkshire, travelling regularly together to race meetings as close friends.
From Lester's angle, Sam's one drawback was his habit of not making up his mind until the last minute about where or whether he would be running his horses, leaving Lester unable to make riding plans with other trainers, a habit he shared incidentally with his great friend Vincent O'Brien. When Sam retired in favour of his son Robert, the Armstrong-Piggott success story continued unabated.
There were the great French trainers, notably the volatile Maurice Zilber, who swaps his jockeys around as the whim takes him and who precipitated another row for Lester by announcing to the Press that Lester would ride his horse Mississipian in the English Derby, without first informing a) Lester, b) his stable jockey Bill Pyers, or c) the owner, Nelson Bunker Hunt. Bill Pyers not unreasonably kicked up a terrible fuss, the headlines thundered indignantly away and the owner finally decided not to run the horse at all. Great stuff!
Among other foreign trainers, Lester's longest and most fruitful association and friendship has probably been with Ivan Allan of Singapore. Lester rates him as a trainer in the class of Noel Murless, Vincent O'Brien and Henry Cecil, and says he has an eye for bloodstock as good as any in the world. He bought Commanche Run, for instance, for £9,000.
Born a mixture of English, Scottish, Indian and Malaysian, Ivan Allan is a shrewd, quiet, thoughtful perfectionist who brings off great coups for his gambling Eastern owners. "In England," Lester says, "winning big races is what matters. Out where Ivan trains, it's winning big bets; and I don't know which is more difficult." It was for Allan that Lester won the Lion City Cup by dodging the immigration desk at Singapore.
Lester won sporadically over many years for Paddy Prendergast, the flamboyant and excitable Irishman who, if anything displeased him in a race, would go screaming off to the Press saying, "Lester will never ride for me again," only to ring up to re-engage Lester three or four weeks later as if nothing had happened.
Towards the end, Lester returned to Warren Place to ride for Noel Murless's son-in-law, Henry Cecil (see next chapter) and also teamed up frequently with the young Italian Luca Cumani (see the chapter on Commanche Run).
The years from 1966 to 1980 were Vincent O'Brien's.
Vincent rode in amateur races as a young man, but Lester has never seen him on a horse. Lester would think it essential for a trainer to ride out with his string, if it weren't that Vincent doesn't do it.
Quiet and retiring, Vincent lives comfortably at Ballydoyle, County Tipperary, a hundred miles south-west of Dublin. Early in his training career, he had only jumpers, scoring marvellous and seemingly never-ending successes, with four Cheltenham Gold Cups, three Champion Hurdles, and three Grand Nationals. It wasn't until 1957 that he began to turn seriously to the Flat.
Lester's approval of his methods is unbounded. "Vincent is the best," he says. "He does everything right in a commonsense way, and he has great insight into his horses.
He thinks of what will please them. He makes life interesting for them so that they'll enjoy what they're doing. Like Noel used to, he thinks about his horses all the time and nothing else matters. He doesn't like to make up his mind very long before a race whether to run or not. The ground has to be just right. He pays great attention to detail. He makes good horses: some of his best winners wouldn't have been great if they'd been trained by anyone else."
Way back in 1958, when Vincent asked twentytwo-year-old Lester to partner Gladness in the Ascot Gold Cup, he had never met him or seen him race, as he hadn't been Flat racing in England much by then.
Having picked his jockey on reputation alone, Vincent then had Lester come to a hotel in Ascot on the morning of the race, and for an hour in a private room showed him films of all Gladness's former outings. He told Lester about her character and her likes and dislikes, and how she might best be ridden. Lester watched and listened, went along to the course and won the Gold Cup. It was the opening day of the great partnership, which took further steps forward later in the year when Lester and Gladness won the Goodwood Cup and also the Ebor at York.
Lester says, "Often afterwards Vincent showed me films if I was going to ride a horse for him that I hadn't seen. Once I'd ridden a horse, he never said any more. He knew I'd know what to do. He shows films to other jockeys, too. Attention to detail, all the time."
Vincent's views on Lester are equally unequivocal and admiring. "There's no question he's an absolute genius," Vincent says. "I don't believe there's ever been a jockey who thinks more about what he's ridden and what he's going to ride. I very much appreciated his views on my horses. Sometimes he wouldn't give an opinion immediately, and it might be the next week, when I met him, that he'd say something that really cleared my mind on any doubts I had regarding a horse. He'd give me an explanation of why it had run the way it had. He was rarely wrong in his assessment.
"And he was smart; he discovered how to ride the Ribot horses. So many of that stock were mean devils and ungenerous, and they wouldn't go any pace early on in races, and Lester would sit with them and let the field go ahead until he felt them beginning to pick up, and then he'd get them to go, and I saw him win races you couldn't believe he could possibly win from where he was.
"For me, there was nobody else who could really ride the Ribots-Ribocco, Ribofilio, Ribero, all those."
Of the Roberto affair, Vincent says, "After Bill Williamson had the fall, I was immediately afraid he wouldn't be fit to ride in the Derby, and up until the Monday before the Derby Bill Tucker in London wasn't at all happy with Bill Williamson's progress. John Galbreath set up the appointment to see Bill Williamson at Claridge's Hotel at five o'clock but Bill arrived early, and when I got there at five John Galbreath had already told him he didn't want him to ride. John Galbreath had said that, as an athlete, there was no way he was going to be fit, and so it was settled. I rang up the Press Association from Claridge's and told them Lester would be riding Roberto."
Of the Derby itself, Vincent says, "Unless Roberto might by some miracle have done more for another jockey, no one but Lester could have won. Lester said to me that night, late on, at the celebration party, `He wasn't doing much for me, you know.' "
But, Vincent laughs, "Perhaps he'd have done less for anyone else."
Of Sir Ivor and Nijinsky, Vincent says, "They were two great horses, and it would be hard for me to say which was the better. There was a real doubt about their getting a mile and a half because they were both American bred, and the Americans breed their horses for a mile and a quarter, the distance of their top classic races. Sir Ivor and Nijinsky were both best at a mile and a quarter."
I mentioned that Lester still thinks Sir Ivor the best horse he ever rode, and Vincent said, "I can imagine him saying that because there were no problems with Sir Ivor.
He must have been a grand horse to ride, he was as tough as could be, he didn't care, the crowd didn't bother him a bit, the other horses bein
g on their toes didn't trouble him.
During a race he didn't pull, he'd settle and go anywhere you wanted, and where you asked him, he'd go, just like that. Whereas Nijinsky got tensed up and sweated. Once he was out of the stalls, Lester said, he was fine. He'd drop his bit and be perfectly all right, but the waiting about beforehand always upset him. Of course, having a horse like that under you doesn't help, it's bound to get you tensed up. I'm sure Lester liked Sir Ivor better."
He went on, "Lester revolutionised race-riding, you know. Before Lester, if there was no pace, if no one wanted to take up the running, no jockey would go on, and the horses would crawl. But Lester finished all that because if nothing went, he went, and you never see slow-run races any more. The others picked it up from him, but he was the one who started it. It's a good thing, because the public were very critical of a slow early pace.
"Lester was a truly, truly great jockey and it was incredible that at fifty he was riding better than ever. His brain had matured, his thinking was so good. I think at the end, he was the best he'd ever been."
Vincent and his wife Jacqueline were afraid, after I'd talked with them for a while, that they'd said so many nice things about Lester he might seem an insipid goody-goody, so they cast around for a few derogatory remarks, without any noticeable success. Their voices throughout were as affectionate as Sir Noel Murless's had been, the good memories crowding in.