Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  Wall Street, his first winner, was 2-1 favourite but no easy ride. Many had questioned whether Wall Street was really bred to last a mile and a half, so to lead all the way and beat a horse as good as Salmon Ladder in the final challenge by half a length required a truly sensitive judgment of pace.

  In the second race Frankie was lucky. Walter Swinburn’s mount Lucayan Prince had to be covered up and produced only in the dying strides. Swinburn was sitting on a whole lot of horse but he encountered traffic problems as he came to challenge. Two strides beyond the line he was in front, but at the post it was Dettori on Diffident who had prevailed and while Diffident did come from the then all-conquering Godolphin operation, he was scarcely one of their stars, having run a stinker to finish last at Newmarket on his previous appearance. His 12-1 price was if anything rather cramped odds but Dettori’s driving crouch, clamped to the horse’s neck as if man and horse were one being, somehow got him to the line on time.

  Third was the big race, Mark of Esteem’s success in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. There was no doubt there that Frankie Dettori was on the right horse for this one. Mark of Esteem had looked superb in the paddock and his acceleration when he came to take on that lovely filly Bosra Sham, the pair of them clear of most of the best milers in Europe, was awe-inspiring. Said the jockey of his final furlong burst, ‘The delivery was like a fuel injection – it just knocked me out of my seat.’ Dettori had obeyed Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘wait and wait’ instructions to the letter, something which takes a really cool head in that class of race. Frankie had earlier agreed with Ascot officials not to indulge that day in any of his ‘flying dismounts’. After that he could not resist and his leap from the saddle brought an appreciative roar from the crowd.

  By the time of the fourth race, the hotly competitive Tote Festival Handicap, punters had realised that Frankie was on a roll. In came the price for his mount Decorated Hero from 12-1 to 7-1, a totally unfair price for a horse carrying the top weight of 9st 13lb (including a 5lb penalty) in such a seven-furlong cavalry charge. Dettori manoeuvred his mount across from the dreaded far side draw and went clear at the furlong pole for his most comfortable victory of the day. ‘Don’t touch me – I’m on fire,’ he told a fan who reached out to him and clearly he had got that message through to Decorated Hero. The grinning jockey walked his mount into the winner’s enclosure holding up four fingers. Bookies were beginning to sense the chill and the BBC decided to extend its coverage beyond the four races planned.

  Confidence is the key. You need confidence in timing a challenge, confidence in how much you can ask of a mount, confidence in going for a fast-diminishing gap. Even the irresistibly bubbly Dettori has had to work for that confidence at times. I remember him declaring of a comeback ride after injury how he had doubted himself just for a moment and wondered if the old reflexes would be there. That day at Ascot we needed to remember that earlier that season Frankie had shattered his elbow. Many had scarcely expected him to be back in the saddle by then, let alone riding like the angel in God’s chariot.

  Inevitably Fatefully in the fifth came in from 11-2 in the morning books to 7-4 favourite. Weaving through the pack and again taking it up at the furlong pole, Dettori occasioned a stewards’ inquiry by accidentally interfering with Questionia. This time he had a real race of it as his friend Ray Cochrane, later to pull Frankie out of a blazing plane and then to retire and become his agent, drove after him on the 25-1 outsider Abeyr. They closed on him but Frankie had kept just a little in the tank and on a rapidly tiring horse he just held off the effort of Abeyr by half a length. There was a frisson of alarm from punters when the stewards’ inquiry was announced but the stewards, wise fellows, saw no reason to deprive Frankie of the race.

  In the sixth, trainer Ian Balding had told him to drop in behind on co-favourite Lochangel and bide his time. Instead Frankie took the filly into the lead and stayed there all the way, the sort of move that is praised as genius when you win and castigated as cockiness when you lose. Co-favourite Corsini, with Pat Eddery aboard, battled all the way to the line but Dettori was not to be denied. This time even the officials applauded him in.

  It was in the last race on Fujiyama Crest over two miles that the confidence factor was really confirmed.

  There was no reason for Frankie’s mount to be in with a chance at all. The horse had not won that season. It had not run since finishing tailed-off second last in June, and again it was humping top weight of 9st 10lb, 16lb more than it had carried when winning the same race two years before. Some bookmakers reckoned this was their chance to take some mugs’ money and mitigate their earlier losses but they miscalculated. Again Dettori made all the pace and came home the winner.

  Some sportswriters have wondered if on that extraordinary day some of the other jockeys let Frankie have it easy in the last. But racing is not a team sport and I need no more proof of the genuine nature of his victory than the name of the jockey riding Northern Fleet, who at the post was just a neck away from ruining Frankie’s day. It was one Pat Eddery. They don’t come any more competitive than the several-times champion jockey once nicknamed ‘Polyfilla’ by Joe Mercer because he would fill any gap the others left him.

  If Fujiyama Crest’s connections really had been planning something for this race, one can only feel sorry for them landing it at a starting price of 2-1 when 20-1 would have been more realistic.

  Dettori’s feat was all the more enjoyable for its sheer bravura and the rapport he established with the crowd. He had displayed every facet of race-riding: instinctive judgement of pace, strength in the finish, swiftness in decision and above all that precious capacity to instil in his mounts his own will to win. Bookmakers may have been contemplating throwing themselves into the Thames, the egos of a few other little men might have been irreparably dented but the seven-timer was an extraordinary achievement and it was so good for racing. Every sport needs its superstars to pull in the punters and Frankie was established in that role for evermore.

  Doncaster and the St Leger

  I think it was Jack Berry who first told the story of former athlete and racehorse owner Chris Brasher arriving one day at a northern racetrack to see one of his horses run. He had left his credentials at home and he arrived at the wrong entrance on the far side of the track. No, said the steely-eyed gateman, he would not take him on trust and let him in to walk across and collect his credentials. If he wanted a free badge he would have to walk round the outside of the course, past the stands, through the main car park and then there was a little green door where he might find the manager …

  ‘How far?’ asked the perspiring owner, whose horse was due to run in the first, and was told it was around three-quarters of a mile. ‘Oh come on, just let me in,’ he implored the jobsworth. ‘Here’s the card in the paper. That’s my horse Run Like The Clappers and I’m Mr C. Brasher.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the gateman, recognition dawning, ‘is that Chris Brasher the four-minute miler?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said the relieved owner, hope in his eyes at last. ‘Well in that case it won’t take thee very long then, will it?’ said the gateman.

  Sadly, bound close to Westminster by my day-job duties, I haven’t done as much racing in the North of England as I would like to have done but I love Haydock and Chester and the glorious Knavesmire at York where the gatemen and other staff have always been delightful. My favourite northern track though is Doncaster. In September 2002 I wrote:

  I love Doncaster on St Leger day. There are plenty of good racecourses in Britain and making them work isn’t exactly rocket science. You need good viewing facilities, clear signposting, decent catering, clean loos, an informative public address system and friendly staff. Doncaster has those with some added ingredients. It is not just the pleasant walk under the trees to the welcomingly open saddling boxes or even the vast red-carpeted betting hall which throbs like a 1960s rock and roll ballroom. It is the sheer buzz of a crowd determined to respond to the inv
itation to enjoy itself. The back pocket wads are thicker at Doncaster, the beer goes down faster and the frills, feathers and diamante whatnots are gloriously over the top. A pundit once advised inexperienced lady punters to stand by the parade ring and ‘back anything which winks at you’ – unless it’s Kieren Fallon because that probably means he’s looking straight down your cleavage.

  Given what is generously displayed at Doncaster it is a wonder the mounted jockeys don’t fall out of the saddle.

  The stands have been rebuilt since then but the sentiments remain the same. Five years earlier still I had written resisting calls for the St Leger to be shortened or opened to older horses, insisting that what I liked best was the courage shown by most St Leger winners.

  In 1997 it was John Dunlop’s long-backed grey Silver Patriarch who won. I had backed him for the Leger after the Lingfield Derby trial, which he finished like a horse who could have gone round again and enjoyed it. Silver Patriarch had then finished a close second in the Derby to Benny The Dip and was a touch burly when he returned in the Great Voltigeur at York and again went down narrowly to Stowaway.

  A big horse who always took time to wind up, Silver Patriarch looked for a moment at Doncaster as if he was having trouble going the pace. Pat Eddery’s arms were pumping from a long way out but when he took him to the front, facing into a near-gale-force wind, his mount responded like a champion, first seeing off the French challenger Vertical Speed then going away. He showed himself to be a real toughie: the more his rider asked of him the more he gave, and the knowledgeable Doncaster crowd cheered in horse and rider. At the age of 45, it was Pat Eddery’s 4,000th winner in Britain. I swear that I saw a tear in the eye of the normally imperturbable rider, but he would probably insist it was just the wind.

  Pat was a true champion. So too is trainer Sir Michael Stoute. But even the best have their days of anguish amid the triumphs and I won’t forget one of those days for Sir Michael at Doncaster in the year 2000. I feel sorry for myself when a 10-1 shot I have backed gets mugged on the line, probably sorrier than anybody in history except Eeyore, according to Mrs Oakley, but that day my piffling little losses were put into perspective. Sir Michael even then needed only a St Leger to complete his full hand of British Classic successes. When John Reid took his Air Marshall into the lead in the last furlong of the Leger at Doncaster that year it looked as though this was to be the triumphal moment. Sadly for both trainer and jockey, it was not. John Dunlop’s Millenary, a true racecourse fighter, would not be denied. After a race that had been run at a hectic gallop in the fastest time since 1935, he came again, passed Air Marshall before the line and won by three-quarters of a length under Richard Quinn.

  Sir Michael, as he always does, took that in good part with a rueful smile and a slight sucking-in and puffing out of the cheeks. He then joined the journalists clustered around a TV set in the press room to watch the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown in which his Greek Dance was taking on Coolmore’s Giant’s Causeway and Godolphin’s Best of The Bests for the £486,000 prize. It promised to be one of the races of the season and it delivered.

  On Best of The Bests Frankie Dettori shadowed Giant’s Causeway and took him on two furlongs out. The pair burst clear of the field. But one jockey had other ideas. Because Giant’s Causeway – who had won five Group One contests in four months – was such a fighter, always ready to take on any horse which sought to pass him, the only way to beat him was to swoop late and, if possible, not too closely alongside him so he did not have time to collect himself and fight back. So in Leopardstown, just at the moment Giant’s Causeway had clearly mastered Best of The Bests, Johnny Murtagh brought Greek Dance flying in pursuit. He was travelling seemingly twice as fast as the two horses ahead of him. If his final lunge came off it would be the shock – and the ride – of the year; but it failed by a fraction of a second.

  Whether Giant’s Causeway had just had time to sense what was arriving and respond, whether Johnny Murtagh had been a millisecond late in launching his challenge, we will never know, but he just failed to make it. Beside me, Greek Dance’s trainer let out one huge, strangled shout from deep within his frame. It was part exultation at a plan that had come so tantalisingly close to perfect execution, part agony at failing so narrowly to bring off an amazing coup. After the close defeat in the St Leger just before, it was wounded stag-at-bay stuff, a cry all the way up from the vital organs expressing the generic frustration of trainers down the years at what might have been. Someone once defined racehorse training as ‘months of agony, moments of bliss’. Sometimes that maxim is reversed. Never again, I decided after witnessing such pain, would I whinge about my fiver lost in a photo finish.

  The Leger so often seems to bring a story with it. In 1996 for example it gave John Gosden, the Newmarket trainer with the Roman senator’s profile, whose post-race explanations are a masterclass in the art of horse preparation, an overdue first British Classic. In a memorable scrap on Town Moor that year Frankie Dettori on Shantou triumphed over Pat Eddery on Dushyantor by a neck after the Derby second and third had tussled all the way down the straight.

  John Gosden had learned and originally plied his trade in the USA. One of his mentors there, D. Wayne Lucas, declared wickedly, ‘I taught him all he knows, but not all I know’ and by 1996 Gosden must have been wondering if there was some magic ingredient missing. He had trained horses to finish second, third and fourth in the Derby but although he had an Irish Leger success he was still to win a British Classic. On Shantou Frankie delivered for him and he was on the way to that deserved champion trainer’s crown in 2012.

  In 2002 when Bollin Eric triumphed it was a first Classic success for Tim Easterby and a first British Classic for Kevin Darley, a naturalised Yorkshireman, not to mention success for a breeder, Sir Neil Westbrook, who had had horses with the family for 40 years. Not that the Easterbys were going over the top. Was Tim off to celebrate that night? ‘Let’s get home first.’

  Bollin Eric’s form figures before the race read 32233. I shared a taxi from the station with one of the country’s foremost students of form and he had agreed that while Bollin Eric was a horse it was good to have on your side in a scrap, he could be discarded from calculations because ‘he just doesn’t seem to win’. What we didn’t know was that jockey Kieren Fallon, forced to miss the ride with a suspension, had assured Sir Neil after the Great Voltigeur that Bollin Eric would stay the extra two furlongs and should beat Bandari and Highest next time out. Sure enough, the big Shaamit colt accelerated past Bandari two furlongs out and never looked like being caught by Sir Michael Stoute’s candidate Highest. Not surprisingly, when I asked Tim Easterby if he saw any reason to change the St Leger, he replied with the single word ‘Never’. Even more encouragingly, I received the same response that day from John Sanderson, Doncaster’s chief executive.

  It took many years and the arrival of Mickael Barzalona before the break finally came but I always felt that things were never quite the same again between Frankie Dettori and his long-time boss Sheikh Mohammed after Frankie took the ride on Scorpion for Coolmore in the 2005 St Leger. That year I remember it was pelting with rain, but the elements can never dampen the ardour of the Donny crowds. I wrote then:

  Doncaster is the world capital of hair gel, a cornucopia of spray-tanned decolletage, the last redoubt of the ‘party frock’. Trousers are poured, not pulled on. The rule seems to be ‘the colder the weather, the shorter the hemline’ and everybody enjoys themselves. One lady in pink pulled me under her umbrella in the Tote queue after my second drenching, confiding that she had won £235 on the previous race. So where was the party, I asked, only to receive a look of scorn. ‘It’s all free drinks where we are’. Of course.

  Mind you, Women’s Lib still has some way to go in Doncaster. I saw one Charlotte Church lookalike ordered to join a four-deep crowd at the bar to fetch five pints while her other half worked on the next bet with his cronies. Another version
in frills was being steered through the throng by a very firmly clutched left buttock. I don’t think I would try either with Mrs Oakley.

  Out on the course the pressure was all on Frankie Dettori. He knew questions were being asked about him taking the ride for Coolmore, the great rivals to his retaining Godolphin team. The conditions were dire, with the official going changed to ‘heavy’ after the second race. Scorpion himself was keyed-up: even with three handlers he could scarcely be restrained in the paddock. Having been second in the Irish Derby and having won the Grand Prix de Paris, Scorpion was odds-on. If Frankie were to slip up or ride an injudicious race for Godolphin’s rivals we could all imagine the hullabaloo, and yet still he had enough confidence in the clock in his head to make every yard of the running. Setting a steady pace and then grinding through the gears on the descent from Rose Hill he repelled in turn the challenges of Kong, then Tawqeet and finally The Geezer. It was perfection. The only slip-up came, literally, from the horse. Inside the final furlong, as Frankie sensed the arrival of The Geezer in his slipstream and gave his horse a crack, Scorpion stumbled and veered almost into the running rail before thundering on. ‘When I asked him for a final effort he went to quicken again and just lost his footing – he was trying so much to please me,’ said Frankie. He insisted that had anybody else come at him, his horse would have been able to pull out a bit more. ‘He dug deep like a true champion.’