Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  Nobody wants to be pushed too far to the outside in a Derby field because the wider you are the more the finishing straight camber works against you. Those on the outside will be pressing to get closer to the rail. Those on the rail will be fighting to hold their position. Not only will their momentum down the hill take most horses faster than they feel comfortable going, they need to be prepared to co-operate with their riders in fighting for position. There will be bumps and bangs along the way. Winning a Derby takes a horse with courage as well as ability.

  Even when Tattenham Corner has been negotiated, the horses face a further test in front of the stands. The finishing straight is nearly four furlongs and as they reach the final 200 yards, tired three-year-olds running through a wall of noise face not just a further gut-busting rise to the finishing post but that camber which tilts them in towards the inside rail, making it hard for their riders to stop the contestants hanging to their left and to keep them on a true course to the line. As Richard Hughes points out, not only do nine out of ten horses hang left at Epsom because of the camber: nine out of ten jockeys are right-handed, which makes the surge to the rail even greater.

  I love not just the sight but the sound and smell of Derby Day. Long before I ever got to watch the race I adored the whole romantic sense of history surrounding it. Even before bank holidays were introduced in the 1870s it was London’s unofficial day out. Parliament used to be adjourned for three days to accommodate the Epsom meeting and of course the most sensational Derby ever was in 1913 when the suffragette Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King’s horse Anmer as the field rounded Tattenham corner, later dying from her injuries. Then the favourite Craganour, having passed the post first, was disqualified for interference and the race awarded to the 100-1 outsider Aboyeur. The only other winner to be disqualified was the 1844 victor Running Rein who was later discovered to be a four-year-old. Although colts cannot run in the Oaks, fillies are allowed to contest the Derby: the last to do so and win was Fifinella in 1916 (when the wartime race was run at Newmarket). She took the Oaks as well, two days later.

  Among those I did see were the ill-fated Shergar, whose winning margin was a majestic ten lengths in 1981, and the unbeaten Lammtarra, who only ran four races in his life, although they included the 1995 Derby, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

  Amid the Derby jockeys Lester Piggott reigns supreme, having scored the last of his nine successes on Teenoso in 1983 and the first on Never Say Die in 1954 at only eighteen. There were no celebrations: he went home that night and mowed his parents’ lawn, although he did sneak into a cinema for a private showing of the race newsreel the following week.

  The great Sir Gordon Richards only won the Derby on Pinza at his 28th and final attempt in the Coronation year of 1953. The most remarkable of Steve Donoghue’s six Derby victories was the one on Humorist in 1921. After losing several races by faltering in the last hundred yards the horse had a rogue’s reputation. Although his mount was distressed afterwards, Donoghue won by a neck without using his whip, saying he would rather have cut off his arm than done so. A few weeks later Humorist died in his box after a massive blood loss. Post-mortems revealed that all his life he had been consumptive and his only remaining lung had finally collapsed.

  We all have to explain away our losers and the winners that got away. The best example of that I ever came across was from Peter O’Sullevan, the man whose distinctive honeyed gravel voice provides the soundtrack for so many favourite racing memories. In 1961 Psidium had been so far out of sight in the 2,000 Guineas his jockey would have needed binoculars to pick up the field. Consequently few gave him a chance at Epsom, where Roger Poincelet dropped him out at the back and he came with a rattle at the end of the race. Who says French jockeys can’t negotiate Epsom? Psidium only passed Dicta Drake 50 yards out but so fast was he travelling that by the post he was two lengths up. The 66-1 shot made his way to the winner’s enclosure amid a stunned silence. Peter O’Sullevan had written in the Daily Express before the race, ‘If Psidium wins I’ll be very psurprised.’ Taxed about that by Psidium’s owners after the race, he replied with typical O’Sullevan panache: ‘Consider me in psackcloth.’

  Which then are the Derbies that stick in my mind? I would have to include Shergar’s triumph under Walter Swinburn: I would never have believed a horse could win the Derby by such a margin. Kris Kin was not perhaps a great horse but he is in my mental scrapbook because of Kieren Fallon’s sublime ride the day he won in 2003.

  Sir Percy gets in too because of the incredibly exciting finish when he triumphed in 2006 and because his trainer Marcus Tregoning is one of the nice guys of the sport. Sea The Stars I would include not because his Derby was a particularly exciting one but because l believe John Oxx’s handling of him in his championship year was one of the finest sustained training feats I have ever witnessed. For a horse to win six Group Ones in six months – the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby, the Eclipse, the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – over a range of distances and against the experts at each one is quite phenomenal.

  Aidan O’Brien’s victory with Galileo has to be in there too and for sheer nerve I must include the victory by Pour Moi for André Fabre and the precocious jockey talent of Mickael Barzalona.

  To me Kieren Fallon is the best Derby jockey we have seen since Piggott. Never mind the long series of headlines earned for the wrong reasons: the drink, the personal relationships, the court cases, the severed retainers and that horrific injury in a fall at Ascot which almost lost him his arm; at Epsom it seems the Force is with him. In 2003 at 38 he had been champion for five of the previous six seasons. His mount was the inexperienced Kris Kin, trained by Sir Michael Stoute and owned by Saeed Suhail who had at one stage during Kieren’s drinking troubles taken him off his horses. At Stoute’s instigation, Suhail had gambled £90,000 by putting Kris Kin back in the race at the last possible forfeit stage, days before it was run. Punters took the hint and on the day backed him down from 14-1 to 6-1 third favourite.

  The chestnut, a notable sluggard on the gallops, was having only his fourth race and Fallon, by now teetotal, had never ridden him before. They did not quite jump off with the early leaders The Great Gatsby and Dutch Gold but Kieren, aware of the need for a good position, quickly sent Kris Kin after them up the early rise. Crucially then, finding his mount short of room as they reached the top of the hill and a little uncertain about scrapping for it, Kieren did not drive him hard but let the horse do what he was comfortable with and regain his confidence. He said afterwards, ‘I was a bit worried there but I let him find himself. He came through it in a stride or two and was man enough to hold his own. Coming down the hill into the home straight I knew when I dug deep he was going to answer.’

  So Kris Kin did. Three furlongs out you would not have said Stoute’s contender was among those going the best but Fallon balanced him, moved out enough to get a clear run and then began demanding of the horse beneath him with all the power he can generate. He conjured up a tremendous surge through the last furlong, caught The Great Gatsby ten strides from the line and won going away by a clear length. Said Sir Michael Stoute, who had won the race previously with Shergar and Shahrastani and who does not waste words, ‘That was one of the greatest rides you will ever see at Epsom.’

  Sir Percy’s triumph in the 2006 Derby was heartwarming because for once the race did not go to the big battalions able to pay millions for a horse. Victoria and Anthony Pakenham had paid just 16,000 guineas for the son of 2,000 Guineas winner Mark of Esteem. It was thanks to the Guineas that Sir Percy’s participation in the Derby remained in question until close to the race: they had not watered at Newmarket that year and he became jarred up in finishing second to George Washington and had to have intensive physiotherapy throughout his Epsom preparation.

  Jockey Martin Dwyer was briefly in doubt too. Riding at Bath the
day before, he was thrown in the paddock, cracked a rib and hurt his back. Worried whether his jockey was fit enough, even trainer Marcus Tregoning had his problems on the way to Epsom: he was picked up for speeding on his way from Lambourn and given a ticket even though he sought mitigation as the trainer of the third favourite in the Derby. Some policemen have no soul.

  The race itself was as exciting as any ever seen. For some reason, I think I had been caught in conversation until too late, I watched from close to the finishing post and I could not have called the winner of the first photo finish since 1997.

  It had been a rough race with plenty of scrimmaging coming to Tattenham Corner. At that point Dragon Dancer, ridden by Darryll Holland, joined Dylan Thomas and Johnny Murtagh in the lead with the maiden Hala Bek (Philip Robinson) and the Aga Khan’s Visindar, the favourite, closing on the leading pair under Christophe Soumillon. Sir Percy was only ninth or tenth at that point.

  Coming up the cambered straight experience and balance became crucial. Although the first two were not stopping, Hala Bek, who looked full of running, was beginning to look as though he might catch them and compensate his popular trainer Michael Jarvis, whose Coshocton had broken a leg close to the finish four years before. But as Visindar fell away and Robinson urged Hala Bek to go for it he veered violently to his right under the pressure.

  The lightly raced Dragon Dancer had never won a race and when urged by Darryll Holland to challenge Dylan Thomas seemed momentarily uncertain what was expected of him. Hala Bek’s swerve and Dragon Dancer’s hesitation cost them both because Martin Dwyer had taken a gamble. Despite the likelihood of the horses ahead of him lugging left with the Epsom camber he spied a gap along the rail and went for it late with what they reckoned was Sir Percy’s single burst of speed. It was one of those daring manoeuvres that makes a jockey look a genius when it comes off and a dumbo when it doesn’t. The compact Sir Percy was a well-balanced horse with more experience than his rivals and he had the courage to respond. Just as Holland had made Dragon Dancer’s mind up for him and he got by Dylan Thomas, Sir Percy flashed past them both to win by a short head.

  So convinced was Darryll that he had won that he looked down at his own number cloth in disbelief when the photo result was called. Second and third were separated by a head and third and fourth by another short head.

  Sir Percy, who had been unbeaten as a two-year-old, never seemed quite the same horse afterwards and did not win again but as Marcus Tregoning has said since, ‘How could they ever say it wasn’t a good Derby? Of course it was, and one of the most memorable.’

  Among English-based trainers, I have been happy to celebrate Derby success too for Luca Cumani, for William Haggas and for Michael Bell, all of them men with that precious gift of sharing their pleasures and involving the racing world in them. But in recent years betting calculations have often involved the Coolmore contingent trained by Aidan O’Brien.

  After O’Brien succeeded with Galileo in 2001 I wrote:

  Not so long ago, after Golan’s burst of speed took him from last to first in the 2,000 Guineas we were talking of him as a potential world-beater. The only question was whether a horse with that much speed could last the Derby distance. Golan did last the distance and lasted it well. But he was beaten out of sight by Galileo who truly could be one of the horses of the decade.

  I had written in advance in my Spectator column that there was a case to be made for Galileo:

  I only wish I could have had a whisper beforehand of what the 31-year-old Aidan O’Brien was willing to tell us after the Derby. In that soft-spoken, hesitant voice of his, he declared that when he gave Galileo his first canter as a two-year-old the horse was already good enough to win any six-furlong maiden race you cared to put him in. After his last run, Galileo had improved in his next piece of work by an incredible 15–18 lengths, said the young master of Ballydoyle. ‘It was very hard to believe that he was doing what he was doing. I have never seen a horse do that and show that kind of speed.’ So good was Galileo at home that they thought the other horses must be wrong. Although there now seems to have been a change of heart from the Coolmore team, who have decided to go for the Irish Derby after all, O’Brien even suggested initially after the Derby victory that we might see Galileo running over a mile or a mile and a quarter in future rather than the Derby distance of a mile and a half. He explained, ‘Speed is his thing. He just finds it very easy to go very fast.’

  Clearly he does. Derby-winning Jockey Mick Kinane complained that the early pace of the race was slow and Galileo was unchallenged at the end of the race, and yet this year’s winner ran the second fastest Derby time ever. ‘You wouldn’t want to pick him up,’ said Kinane. ‘He just took off.’ When we asked Aidan, with an American campaign in mind, if Galileo would handle a dirt track he replied, ‘This one could gallop on water.’ (They always did say that the Irish definition of soft going approximated to the Grand Canal in Venice.) No wonder that co-owner Michael Tabor, asked if he had had a bit on the horse, replied, ‘Several times, at prices from 7-1 down.’ And when he talks about ‘a bit’ it probably means he won enough to buy a lump of Mayfair.

  He and I deal in different numbers, but I understood exactly what Michael Tabor meant when he told us once after he had won £200,000 at 5-1 on Danetime, ‘I back horses because it has been a way of life for a long time. It’s not the money, it’s being right that is important.’

  I could have listened to Aidan and the Coolmore team for hours and the most striking thing about the brilliant young trainer who has now taken the Irish 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas this season plus the Oaks and Derby double is his incredible and quite genuine modesty. Ask him how he does it and he immediately gives all the credit to a ‘wonderful’ stable staff who ‘look after the horses and don’t let me interfere too much’. Is there no contribution from him, he was pressed. No, not really, it is just that he is lucky enough to get some well-bred horses, he said. Believe that and the moon really is made of blue cheese.

  Maybe in that way he does have the luck of the Irish. But that is not why he trains so many winners. Just watch him with his horses in the parade ring, talking gently to them, brushing over their quarters, sponging out their mouths. You can see that this is a magical man with some special kind of affinity with the animals in his charge …

  As for the Coolmore operation, they go from strength to strength. Last year they had the brave and consistent Giant’s Causeway. Now their great sire Sadler’s Wells has produced a long-overdue Derby winner too. Said John Magnier, sounding a little miffed that anybody had ever doubted the prospect: ‘He’s had five Oaks winners and five seconds to go with the five seconds in the Derby. I don’t know what they’ll do when they start acting around here.’

  O’Brien performed even better the next year. He trained the first two home in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, Rock of Gibraltar and Hawk Wing, and then he came on to Epsom and repeated the 1, 2 feat in the Derby with High Chaparral and Hawk Wing twelve lengths clear of the field. It was the first time any trainer had done that for 50 years. It meant that in just five years O’Brien had trained the winners of sixteen European Classics. As an Irish voice inquired loudly at the entrance to Epsom’s surprisingly poky little winner’s enclosure, ‘What on earth is he going to do when he grows up?’ One more year of success like that, I ventured, and we would all be cheering on Godolphin’s petro-dollar-fuelled battalions as plucky underdogs. And how does O’Brien know when a horse is ready? He told the media one day, ‘You know by his behaviour, the expression on his face, how he carries on with himself.’ Simple really. If only we punters could share the language which Aidan and his horses speak.

  The most recent Derby that remains vivid in my memory was the one that introduced us to a precocious new riding talent and laid the foundations for the break-up of Frankie Dettori’s long and profitable association with Sheikh Mohammed and Godolphin.

  As André Fabre walked off t
he Derby course following the success of Pour Moi in 2011 I watched one of the horse’s connections embrace him and declare, ‘I’ll tell you one thing. He’s a cocky little bastard, isn’t he?’ It wasn’t the horse the hugger had in mind: jockey Mickael Barzalona, despite winning by just a head after coming from further behind to win than any Derby jockey most of us can remember, had stood bolt upright in the stirrups and waved his whip in exultation a couple of strides before reaching the post.

  A jockey who had done that for an old-school trainer like Barry Hills might well have had a crack of the whip across his own backside the next morning on the gallops. Never mind whether it was ‘not quite British’ as I heard some say; showmanship of that kind is unprofessional because it could unbalance the horse and bring the risk of injury. When we sought to winkle an opinion out of M. Fabre, however, he contented himself with noting that the rider is only nineteen. Not for nothing is France’s best trainer, champion for 22 of the previous 24 years, the son of a diplomat.

  It was a day when the racing community had hoped for the Queen to have her first Derby victory with Carlton House but the French had waited 35 years for a Derby victory and when it came it came in extraordinary style. Mickael Barzalona’s ride showed us not just an instinctive genius in the saddle but a jockey with astonishingly cool nerves for any age.

  Disregarding the Lester Piggott maxim on how to ride the Derby, he and André Fabre had planned to run the race the way Pour Moi did, letting most of the field coast ahead of him then picking them all off from the rear. As Fabre confessed, when planning such a tactic it was a relief to find there were only thirteen horses in the Derby field. But setting out to win from the rear is one thing, actually carrying out such a precarious manoeuvre in your first Derby is quite another. Barzalona is a precious talent and he should delight us for decades.