The Sport of Queens

by Dick Francis

  Roimond ran four times in the Grand National, and I rode him twice. Apart from the year when he was second, he never completed the first circuit. He fell with Dick Black and Tim Molony, and he fell with me.

  The year after our near miss, Roimond and I set off to see if we could go one better, but it was not one of his good days, and he fell at the seventh fence. He had only jumped one of the first six fences well, and had forced his way through the tops of the others: one cannot take such liberties with the Aintree fences without coming to a horizontal end. Over Becher’s he made a colossal leap, and as he was in mid-air a press photographer clicked his camera.

  It is a dramatic, a thrilling picture.

  You have probably seen it: ‘Players’ used it for some years on a cigarette advertisement and called it ‘Well ahead’. But Roimond fell at the next fence. He was not ‘well ahead’ for very long.

  When Roimond could no longer win big races Lord Bicester sent him hunting, like Silver Fame. He took to it more successfully than the other horse, and Lord Bicester’s grandson rode him in some hunter chases at the end of the season. It was like greeting an old friend to see him on the course again, and he looked as magnificent as ever.

  It is impossible for jockeys not to have strong preferences, and of all Lord Bicester’s great horses I enjoyed riding Finnure most. These feelings were not shared by Tim Molony, who championed Roimond, or by his brother Martin, who liked Silver Fame best of the three.

  Finnure was a big chestnut of high quality, beautifully proportioned, and very intelligent. It gave me great pleasure just to sit on his back and look forward between his alertly pricked ears. In addition, he jumped with tremendous power, and his speed from the last fence was deeply exciting. Urging him home along the straight was like pressing the accelerator of a high-powered car; he passed everything in sight.

  Before the Grand National of 1951, I rode Finnure in seven races, and he won all of them except two. On our first attempt he fell, being fresh from Ireland and unused to English fences; and he was once unplaced at Hurst Park, finding the track too sharp for him.

  The five successful races included the Champion Chase at Liverpool, which he won by a length from Coloured School Boy, ridden by that excellent Aintree jockey, Arthur Thompson. Arthur and I had jumped every fence side by side for two miles, and it was only Finnure’s burst of speed on the flat which won him the race.

  His greatest trial, and, I think, his greatest race ever, was the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, 1949. Here his chief opponent was the great Irish horse, Cottage Rake, winner of three Gold Cups at Cheltenham, and, until then, unbeaten over fences in England. It was Cottage Rake who had beaten Roimond in the same race the year before, and many people considered him invincible.

  During most of the race I kept Finnure in the middle of the field, going along comfortably with plenty in hand, and intending to move up to the leaders as we turned into the straight for the last time. Unfortunately Cottage Rake’s jockey, Aubrey Brabazon, had the same idea at the same time, and I found myself tracking him over the last two fences.

  Once over the last, half a length behind, I asked Finnure for his greatest effort, and after a terrific struggle all the way to the post, he got his head in front and won by half a length.

  The tremendous thrill and satisfaction of winning such a race produced a sort of choking feeling in the throat, so that between joy and exhaustion, I could hardly speak, when Lord Bicester greeted us in the unsaddling enclosure.

  A year later, Finnure ran in the Grand National, and I have never gone out to ride in the race with greater hope than I did that day. My splendid mount had already won at Liverpool, and had jumped round the course with confidence. I was sure he would stay the longer distance, and I thought that if all went well, his speed at the end would be decisive.

  All, however, went very far from well.

  There were thirty-six runners that year, and we lined up at the start waiting for one or two stragglers to come up into place, when the tapes went up unexpectedly soon, and we were off. Many horses were quite unprepared for this, and had been standing flat-footed and still, so that it was a very uneven and inauspicious departure.

  Finnure went off at a good gallop towards the far distant first fence. I had been told not to hurry him over the first few fences, but not everyone had the same intention. There was a panicky struggle going on among the jockeys who had instructions to stay in front and keep out of trouble—ironic advice, as things turned out. Several riders came past me with their whips up, and the race degenerated into a ragged cavalry charge up to the first fence. By the time they got there, the leaders were going so fast that they could not steady themselves to jump, and several fell. When Finnure jumped the fence with his usual éclat, he landed among a jumble of men and horses lying on the ground, like the aftermath of a battlefield. He fought to avoid them, but slipped sideways, tried to recover, and fell. I picked myself up, with a deep sense of anti-climax, and joined the group of silent and disappointed jockeys standing on the course.

  Eleven horses fell or were brought down at that fence; nearly a third of the whole field.

  In making his gallant attempt to avoid the struggling figures on the ground, Finnure twisted his hock badly, and did not race again for over eighteen months. After this long rest, he ran three times during the next season, but never regained his old speed and brilliance, and Lord Bicester finally gave him to Bruce Hobbs to use as a hack.

  Bruce, who at seventeen was the youngest rider ever to win the Grand National, rode him out for years with Captain Boyd Rochfort’s string on Newmarket Heath, so the great old fellow still had the smell of racing in his nostrils until the day he died.

  Like Lord Bicester’s three horses, Mont Tremblant was a chestnut. He belonged to Miss Dorothy Paget, and I rode him several times one winter while Dave Dick, his usual jockey, was recovering from a bad accident at Cheltenham where his leg had been torn by a loose rail.

  My first acquaintance with Mont Tremblant was not a great success. Fulke Walwyn, who trained him, asked me to school him round Newbury racecourse after the November meeting there. I set off in the fading afternoon light with two other horses which were being schooled, and we went round the course satisfactorily until we came to the last fence. Mont Tremblant met it wrong and hit it hard. I sailed over in the air and landed on my head.

  Luckily, however, no such diasters befell us when I rode him in races. He won at Kempton, and he gave me my third successive win in the Stanley Chase at Sandown. He was also second in the King George VI Chase at Kempton, beaten by Halloween. It was the third of four consecutive years that I had been concerned in the finish of that race too.

  Mont Tremblant, of course, was an accidental mount for me, and I did not ride him in any of his greatest races. He won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1952, and with Dave Dick back in the saddle, he was second to Early Mist in the Grand National a year later.

  Mont Tremblant was a beautiful horse to ride, for he was a very deliberate jumper, and had a long graceful stride.

  Crudwell’s immense versatility was the result of his interesting breeding. His sire was Noble Star, a good long-distance flat-racer who won many races, including the Cesarewitch, and his dam was Alexandrina, a very successful steeplechasing mare. Few mares which have a strenuous life over fences produce outstanding stock, but at least three of Alexandrina’s foals won races.

  A light-framed, brown, high-quality horse, Crudwell looked every inch a flat-racer, and he was a delicate animal who needed a lot of understanding from his trainer. Until he was eight or nine he was very difficult to feed, because he seemed to sense when he was being prepared for a race, and his nervous excitement upset him. Broken bloodvessels were another of his troubles, and he bled from his nose so often that his racing career might have come to an early enforced end, if it had not been found possible to prevent it by injections before every race.

  For two years, as a three- and four-year-old, Crudwell ran on the
flat. He won several races, and he was not disgraced by finishing second in the Ascot Stakes and third in the Great Metropolitan at Epsom. He would probably have continued in flat races, if his owner, Mrs D. M. Cooper, who had bought him as a foal, had not been impatiently waiting for him to be old enough for hurdling and steeplechasing.

  He took to hurdling as if it were what he had been born for, and won consistently for two more seasons.

  I rode Crudwell for the first time in 1952, when I had begun to ride regularly for Frank Cundell, who trained him. Crudwell was entered for the Henry VIII Novices Chase at Hurst Park, one of the best novice races of the year, but as he had never run over fences, Frank thought he should start in an easier contest. However, I had been so impressed by the horse when I had ridden and schooled him at home, that I managed to persuade Frank to change his mind, and with Mrs Cooper’s blessing, we set off.

  When I rode Crudwell on the downs I had had a rare tremor of excitement, an intuition that our partnership held great promise for both of us. It was the sort of recognition of each other that leads to friendship between man and man, and to an unwavering understanding between man and horse. This sort of sympathy seems to have no particular cause, and no one can really explain it. It just happens.

  The Henry VIII Chase confirmed my impression. I knew lengths before we came to a fence what Crudwell was going to do, and it seemed that he was aware of it. Although it was his first steeplechase he jumped the larger obstacles without fuss, and we went round quietly, towards the back of the field, until we turned into the long straight for the last time.

  Here, when I asked him, Crudwell started to fly. One by one we passed the other horses; his long smooth run took us to the front, and he won by two or three lengths without any great exertion.

  The pattern of slow start and flying finish was unchanged for three seasons. Crudwell could produce a tremendous burst of the speed which had won him his flat and hurdle races, but he did not like to be in front until he was coming into the last fence. Often his habit of trailing lazily along at the rear of the field deceived most people into thinking that he was not as good as he was supposed to be; but of our first ten races together, we won nine.

  At Birmingham in February every year there was always a four-mile chase often used as a trial by horses preparing for the National in March. One year an Irish horse called Churchtown came over to England especially for the race, and Crudwell was also entered. It was one of Crudwell’s greatest efforts. After four miles, in heavy going, he came up to Churchtown at the last fence, and although he was carrying over a stone and a half more weight, he got his head in front half-way to the post, and in a gruelling battle, kept it there until we had safely won.

  Just when Crudwell was popularly supposed to be getting past his best, he won the Welsh National at Chepstow. He had run in it the year before, but had been badly baulked by a falling horse when he was making his fast finishing run, and had not been able to pick up enough speed afterwards to get to the front.

  Devon Loch and the Grand National were still an ache in my mind when Crudwell and I set off ten days later for our second try at the Welsh National.

  As he had grown older his finishing speed had not deserted him, but he could no longer risk lying too far back during the early stages of the race, so I planned to take him gradually to the front, and not leave him too much to do at the end.

  All went well until the third last fence, where Crudwell made a slight mistake. He jumped the next fence very cautiously, and two horses, both carrying very light weights, which had been level with us, went on in front. As we followed them over the last fence I thought there was little hope of catching them again, but Crudwell fought on with his old flying speed, and won the race in his last few strides.

  Dear Crudwell. I forgot Devon Loch for the rest of the day.

  Although Crudwell ran in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and other big races, he usually did not do very well in them, and in that respect might be held not to qualify as a great horse. But any horse that has won more than fifty races of all types, from flat races to four-mile steeplechases, has proved himself to be outstanding. In 1957 he broke the record, and eventually won more races under National Hunt rules than any other horse this century. On Crudwell, in January 1957, I won for the last time.

  8

  Courses

  HORSES for courses. One hears it said so often.

  Some horses have extraordinarily strong preferences for one or two tracks, or for left-handed or right-handed courses only, or for hard or soft going, or for sun on their backs, and a wise trainer does not try to lay down an opposite law. Put a horse on a track he likes, on going he likes, with a jockey he likes, and he will be worth a stone and ten lengths by the finish.

  For an island the size of Great Britain, the number of steeplechase courses we have is colossal, for there are forty-five on which National Hunt meetings are regularly held. Even so, since the beginning of the century the number of courses has been steadily decreasing.

  Gatwick, Derby, Rugby, Hawthorn Hill, Pershore, Colwall Park, Monmouth and Bridgenorth were war casualties in 1939, and Newport only survived for a few seasons afterwards. More recent closures have been at Beaufort Hunt, Buckfastleigh, Hurst Park, Woore, Rothbury, Manchester, Birmingham and Bogside, but the new jumping course at Ascot has added lustre to the list.

  Bangor-on-Dee, ten miles over the border, is the only course in Wales now, since Chepstow in Monmouthshire reluctantly became English. Even the Welsh Grand National is expatriated. Tenby, Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Glamorgan Hunt have all expired.

  There are no meetings in Cornwall, and only two Devonshire courses, Newton Abbot, and Devon and Exeter at Haldon, are healthily surviving; mainly because they are close together and hold their meetings in the same weeks in August and September, so that it is convenient for trainers to send their horses down to stay for a while and run in several races without making long journeys in between. Totnes, Plymouth, and Torquay are also dead.

  There are no meetings in Dorset, Hampshire (Bournemouth died in infancy), Essex (Chelmsford gone), or Suffolk (Bungay defunct).

  Kent is hanging on by its eyebrows with a few days at the beautiful course at Folkestone, and the very small but well attended one-day meetings at Wye. Norfolk has four days a year at Fakenham, and Lincolnshire is only represented by Market Rasen. Scotland now has only three courses.

  The enormous variety of the construction and landscape of the courses keeps a jockey wide awake. There are hills, sharp corners, unrailed fences, awkward landings, cross-over courses, tan or cinder covered roads, and indistinct marking flags, all to be reckoned with.

  The regulations for the constitution of National Hunt courses allow a lot of freedom. Maximum and minimum standards are laid down, but between their limits each racecourse executive can choose widely, and make a soft easy course or a severe one, according to their needs or beliefs.

  I think it might be useful to make it clear what the basic requirements are, and as I can certainly not put it as lucidly as the rules themselves, I will quote them word for word.

  Rule 44. In all steeplechase courses:

  (a) All fences, except those at water-jumps, must be not less than four feet six inches in height.

  (b) In the first two miles there shall be at least twelve fences, and in each succeeding mile at least six fences.

  (c) For each mile there shall be at least one ditch six feet wide and two feet deep on the take-off side of a fence, guarded by a bank and rail not exceeding two feet in height.

  (d) There shall be a water-jump at least twelve feet wide and two feet deep, guarded by a fence not exceeding three feet in height. (The water-jump may be regarded as one of the fences prescribed by section (b).)

  Rule 45.

  In all Hurdle Race Courses there shall be not less than eight flights of hurdles in the first two miles, with an additional flight of hurdles for every completed quarter of a mile beyond that distance, the height of the hurdles being not
less than three feet six inches from the bottom bar to the top bar.

  I have ridden races on most of the different courses, and in my mind have always sorted them out into two main categories, flat and hilly. (The official term for hilly is undulating.) These I subdivided into flat and easy, flat and difficult, hilly and easy, and hilly and difficult. The divisions are my own personal opinions, and other jockeys may thoroughly disagree with me.

  Every race, as I have probably said only too often, is an individual event, never repeated and rarely predicted. It is not possible to find universal rules about horses, and if you know an exception to every generalisation I make, I would not be surprised.

  The rough classification of courses which follows refers to steeplechase tracks only. Hurdle race tracks do not vary nearly so much, for although they have their own problems of hills and sharp corners, the obstacles themselves are the same everywhere.

  Flat and Easy

  Bangor-on-Dee

  Catterick

  Hereford

  Cartmel

  Huntingdon

  Kelso

  Ludlow

  Market Rasen

  Newton Abbot

  Nottingham

  Southwell

  Stratford-on-Avon

  Taunton

  Uttoxeter

  Wincanton

  Wetherby

  Windsor

  Wolverhampton

  Worcester

  Wye

  Flat and Difficult

  Aintree

  Doncaster

  Haydock Park

  Kempton Park

  Newbury

  Hilly and Easy

  Folkestone

  Fontwell Park