Discuss!!
50 - Kieren Fallon
Should be higher, and would be but for the unignorable baggage of notoriety, but has to be included as a genuine hero to so many ordinary punters who cheerfully forgive his every self-destructive idiocy for just one of those compelling finishes he still rides better than any man alive.
Razor racing brain, icy in the saddle, he is so surprisingly diverting away from racing that he is hard to dislike. May yet return in glory one more time after his latest folly of a drugs ban.
49 - Ben de Haan
Shy, self-effacing boy-next-door type, a lifer in the Lambourn area, he gets in for just one ride - and it’s not his 1983 Grand National win on Corbiere. Two years later, De Haan won a humble maiden chase at Newton Abbot on a mare called Sportswords. My mare. My first winner as an owner.
Anyone who has had the feeling will appreciate that the jockey is a hero forever. Sportswords never featured again and De Haan’s training career has been similarly disappointing.
48 - Cartmel racecourse
Nobody told me I couldn’t include a venue and this is a properly heroic place, a throwback to innocent times when village life meant so much more. The survival, since 1856, of a postage-stamp racecourse, wedged onto former Priory land in a tiny tourist village served only by farm-track roads, is a modern sporting miracle. And still this wondrous place draws crowds that make Newmarket drool with envy. Long may it flourish.
47 - Charlottown
It was World Cup summer in England and I was just out of the 11-plus, mad on football and cricket and with no known interest in racing. Yet, like all sporty kids, there were elements that fascinated me. If racing ever came up at school, the jockeys mentioned were Lester Piggott and Scobie Breasley. Because he smiled and spoke with an exotic Australian accent, Scobie was my man and, for some reason, I remember being wildly enthusiastic about his Derby win on Charlottown. It was more than a decade before racing distracted me again.
46 - Dave Roberts
Sporting agents are generally regarded as pond life, thanks to the dealings of certain greedy, egocentric football operatives. Roberts could hardly be more different.
Few even know what he looks like, such is the reclusive nature of his daily grind, yet jump racing revolves around his dealings. Handles the rides of most of the top jockeys and has the ear of every leading trainer regarding running plans, yet somehow manages to keep them all happy. Tony McCoy is just one who says he will forever be in his debt.
45 - Foinavon
Yes, I know he wasn’t a great horse but then nor was that serial loser, Quixall Crossett, and I nearly put him in, too. The point is that everyone has heard of Foinavon and most can recite the circumstances of the 1967 Grand National, which he won only by being so far behind the field that he avoided the notorious pile-up at the 23rd fence now forever named after him. Foinavon, a 100-1 shot, was ridden by John Buckingham who became a jockeys’ valet for decades afterwards but really lived off the Foinavon story.
44 - Freddie Williams
The last of the brave bookmakers on which racing legend is founded. On the day he died, last June, Williams had been betting at Ayr races and Shawfield dogs before suffering a massive heart attack. Ten years earlier, he had a triple heart bypass, yet four weeks later he successfully bid for the coveted number two pitch at Cheltenham in the first such bookies’ auction. Though much of his money was made from a bottling plant in Scotland, Williams was known for his duels in the ring, taking every bet the likes of J.P.McManus wanted. We won’t see his like again.
43 - Reg Hollinshead
Thirty years ago, he was the first trainer I met and even then they called him an elder statesman.
At 84, he still holds the licence at the Staffordshire farm that has seen him produce thousands of winners, often at modest level, and a steady stream of well-rounded jockeys (Walter Swinburn included) that have learned under his tutelage. A man of few words and even fewer holidays, Hollinshead is the epitome of the type that eschews fuss and glamour and just gets the job done. He’ll probably still be training horses and riders at 100.
42 - Peter Scudamore
Utterly driven, he was the ideal stable jockey for Martin Pipe and between them they forged a relationship that revolutionised jump racing and won both numerous championships. ’Scu’, who rode almost half of his 1,678 winners for Pipe, usually went off in front and burned off the opposition, a simple tactic that underestimates the meticulous planning of the stable. Comes from a great racing family - his father, Michael, won the Grand National on Oxo, while his sons Tom and Mike are now jockey and trainer respectively.
41 - Sir Michael Stoute
For training Shergar and three other Derby winners. For his nine trainers’ titles. For handling jockeys such as Kieren Fallon and the younger, wilder Johnny Murtagh with a firm, fatherly patience. For being the best and most consistent flat trainer in Britain in the past quarter-century. For his deafening guffaws at his own jokes and for his delight - as a born and raised Bajan - in putting down the England cricket team. Not least, for his well-rehearsed cabaret spin-and-march to avoid talking to the press.
40 - Peter Bowen
He will spend Christmas Day in his horsebox, just as he does most years, but there will be no complaints either from Peter Bowen or his devoted family. Along with wife Karen and his three young sons - one or all of whom will go on to train themselves - Bowen covers a staggering number of miles taking runners from his base in West Wales. It is a triumph of dedication, of hope over practicality, and finally, years after it was due, he is receiving the respect he deserves in good horses and big-race wins. Snoopy Loopy is the jumps horse of the moment and his trainer, having overcome isolation, public ignorance and serious illness, is an example to us all.
39 - Sir Peter O’Sullevan
Every sport has that one voice to identify it. Cricket, for my generation, still has John Arlott, rugby Bill McLaren and golf Peter Alliss. For millions, from addicts to once-a-year punters, O’Sullevan’s deep, rich and comfortingly balanced delivery is the sound of horseracing.
Perhaps his greatest commentaries came when his own horses, Be Friendly and Attivo, won big races yet his professionalism never wavered. He is 90 now, yet still a wonderful orator, not to mention a tireless donator to charities.
38 - Josh Gifford
This gets personal, too. Josh is not only the trainer of Aldaniti and one of the nicest men you could meet. He also kidded himself for years he was good at cricket.
Rather like me. So we were rival captains in an annual game on his local ground, every first Monday in September. It was a ritual for 21 years, until we both got too old. That apart, Josh had been a fine jockey in those cavalier days of derring-do with Biddlecombe et al, then a highly respected trainer. He waited an eternity for his first Cheltenham Festival winner, then cried rivers of joy when it came, just as he did when his final runner won, as if scripted, at his beloved Sandown Park.
37 - Jeff King
When my racing interest was first fired, 30 years ago, Jeff King was the ideal subject matter. We produced a book together on the lifestyle of jump jockeys and the project was an education! King was a tough, durable and technically brilliant rider. Many good judges feel he was the best never to be champion. He also loved the life, the cameraderie and the socialising. Later, as a trainer, his undoubted skills were undermined by too few horses, along with a compulsion to say what he thought at all times.
36 - Peter Savill
Controversial choice, controversial man, but in his six years as chairman of the BHB he came closer than anyone - before or since - to securing financial stability for racing. Savill, who made his money out of publishing, loved racing more than many acknowledged - but he also loved a fight and identified a heavyweight scrap with the betting industry as one he had to win. He was denied the greatest victory of a commercial Levy replacement by an obscure judgment in the European courts. Sadly, his many enemies will blame him for that, along with much else, and ignore the advances acquired by his incisive mind and workaholic nature.
35 - J.P.McManus
While new to racing journalism, I arranged to interview McManus, who had Istabraq going for another Champion Hurdle in those green-and-gold colours of his native Limerick.
We met in the Dorchester, where all the staff deferred to him as they might a president or royalty, and in an hour of trying I got nothing out of him bar courtesy and fine champagne. J.P. does not lightly spill his secrets, just one reason why he is so respected. He is also revered as a man of integrity, loyalty and generosity.
His other reputation, that of a fearless punter, is equally deserved. Owns a dizzying number of horses, including a lot of bad ones, but no one begrudges him his glories, and that says a lot.
34 - Pat Eddery
Hard to believe he isn’t still riding, really. For the best part of four decades, he was out there every day of the flat year, barring suspensions, and the winners tally finally rose to a vertiginous 4,362 - only Sir Gordon Richards has more and he was just before my time. Eddery had his own style, which was mighty effective if not easy on the eye, and his judgment of pace was legendary. Three Derbies, four Arcs and 11 times champion jockey are his legacies but, beneath the taciturn front, he was also great company.
33 - Limestone Lad
A horse hewn out of the same rugged terrain as the hills of his County Kilkenny home, Limestone Lad won the hearts of all Ireland during his phenomenal hurdling career. He won a staggering 35 races in all, many of them at the highest level, and usually with gutsy, front-running tactics.
But it was the story of the horse that captivated so many. He was trained on a remote village farm (a one-horse farm until the fame of the one brought a few more along) by the Bowe family, who could never quite see what all the fuss was about.
A proper hero, he would have brought the biggest Irish invasion of Cheltenham’s winners’ enclosure since Dawn Run had he finished first rather than third in the Stayers’ Hurdle of 2003.
32 - Paul Nicholls
Who knows what records the man may go on to break? Already, having finally wrested the trainers’ title from Martin Pipe and induced the great man’s retirement, he has taken earnings in a jumps season to unprecedented levels and, last spring, trained the first three home in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The whining sceptics say he has all the best horses but how has that happened? Largely, through skills in managing people as well as horses. Nicholls has a legion of rich owners but they have come to him because they trust his judgment and enjoy his company. BBC TV had a Coach of the Year category on its Sports Personality show. It was a scandal that Nicholls did not make the frame
31 - 'Ginger' McCain
Well, you can’t leave him out, can you? A human Aintree legend, the trainer of four Grand National winners and a character for which the term ’larger than life’ might have been invented, McCain is that rare being whose nickname identifies him way beyond the usual boundaries of the sport. Irrascible, immoderate and utterly irrespressible, he was also a one-off in being known almost entirely for one race each year. His son, also Donald but without the ’Ginger’, is already a far more rounded trainer with a thriving yard. But he will never recreate the indelible magic of his father training Red Rum behind a car showroom in Southport.
30 - Giant’s Causeway
The Ballydoyle empire, under its mega-rich Coolmore breeding patronage, has produced countless champions over the past decade but few have captured public imagination quite like Giant’s Causeway. During 2000, he dominated the flat season with an unprecedented five group one wins as a three-year-old. But it was his character and mannerisms that endeared him. This was no flashy speed machine but a grinding battler who wanted to outstare the opposition, to make them blink first. Time after time, he succeeded, breaking the hearts of fine horses and earning the apt soubriquet ’The Iron Horse’.
29 - Terry Biddlecombe
Younger racing folk will know Biddlecombe only as husband of Henrietta Knight, the other half of that engagingly dotty couple responsible for the making of Best Mate. For that alone, he merits consideration but it is for his original racing career - the epitome of the tough, cavalier jockey - that he rates so high. Biddlecombe was racing’s celebrity face in the 1960s - the fair-haired, handsome and devil-may-care champion jump jockey had women falling at his feet (or so he claims) and commanded interest in a way few subsequent jockeys have managed.
28 - Dermot Weld
We are forever being told that flat racing is getting more international but Dermot Weld gave birth to the notion long ago. Weld is an institution in his native Ireland, where he has been champion trainer 21 times, and exerts huge influence over racing, but he has made his name by breaking moulds. First, in 1990, he took on the Americans in their own backyard and became the first European trainer to win a leg of the Triple Crown when Go and Go won the Belmont. Then, three years later, Vintage Crop made more history by taking the Melbourne Cup, previously an exclusively Australasian feast. He won it again in 2002 and is intent on adding to the tally.
27 - Sea Pigeon
For any racehorse owner, Sea Pigeon is the dream, the template. He raced for ten years, flat and jumps, and had the rare distinction of being partnered by Lester Piggott, Jonjo O’Neill and John Francome. He ran in the Derby and, seven years later, won his first of two Champion Hurdles.
Under three trainers - Jeremy Tree, Peter Easterby and Gordon Richards - he developed a style of running in which the excitement was always in the anticipation of his late thrust for glory. He won 37 races in all but many more hearts.
26 - Aidan O’Brien
The acreage of newsprint in homage to Aidan O’Brien is testament to his achievements in flat racing but to appreciate him thoroughly it is necessary to visit Ballydoyle (appointment only). There, in admittedly sumptuous facilities, the man is in his element, communing with his horses in a way that Desmond Morris would have found fascinating. Nothing is left to chance, no little detail overlooked. His staff idolise him but also recognise a boss who works every hour God sends and expects something similar from his disciples. A remarkable man who will continue to dominate for as long as he handles the stress and expectation.
50 - Kieren Fallon
Should be higher, and would be but for the unignorable baggage of notoriety, but has to be included as a genuine hero to so many ordinary punters who cheerfully forgive his every self-destructive idiocy for just one of those compelling finishes he still rides better than any man alive.
Razor racing brain, icy in the saddle, he is so surprisingly diverting away from racing that he is hard to dislike. May yet return in glory one more time after his latest folly of a drugs ban.
49 - Ben de Haan
Shy, self-effacing boy-next-door type, a lifer in the Lambourn area, he gets in for just one ride - and it’s not his 1983 Grand National win on Corbiere. Two years later, De Haan won a humble maiden chase at Newton Abbot on a mare called Sportswords. My mare. My first winner as an owner.
Anyone who has had the feeling will appreciate that the jockey is a hero forever. Sportswords never featured again and De Haan’s training career has been similarly disappointing.
48 - Cartmel racecourse
Nobody told me I couldn’t include a venue and this is a properly heroic place, a throwback to innocent times when village life meant so much more. The survival, since 1856, of a postage-stamp racecourse, wedged onto former Priory land in a tiny tourist village served only by farm-track roads, is a modern sporting miracle. And still this wondrous place draws crowds that make Newmarket drool with envy. Long may it flourish.
47 - Charlottown
It was World Cup summer in England and I was just out of the 11-plus, mad on football and cricket and with no known interest in racing. Yet, like all sporty kids, there were elements that fascinated me. If racing ever came up at school, the jockeys mentioned were Lester Piggott and Scobie Breasley. Because he smiled and spoke with an exotic Australian accent, Scobie was my man and, for some reason, I remember being wildly enthusiastic about his Derby win on Charlottown. It was more than a decade before racing distracted me again.
46 - Dave Roberts
Sporting agents are generally regarded as pond life, thanks to the dealings of certain greedy, egocentric football operatives. Roberts could hardly be more different.
Few even know what he looks like, such is the reclusive nature of his daily grind, yet jump racing revolves around his dealings. Handles the rides of most of the top jockeys and has the ear of every leading trainer regarding running plans, yet somehow manages to keep them all happy. Tony McCoy is just one who says he will forever be in his debt.
45 - Foinavon
Yes, I know he wasn’t a great horse but then nor was that serial loser, Quixall Crossett, and I nearly put him in, too. The point is that everyone has heard of Foinavon and most can recite the circumstances of the 1967 Grand National, which he won only by being so far behind the field that he avoided the notorious pile-up at the 23rd fence now forever named after him. Foinavon, a 100-1 shot, was ridden by John Buckingham who became a jockeys’ valet for decades afterwards but really lived off the Foinavon story.
44 - Freddie Williams
The last of the brave bookmakers on which racing legend is founded. On the day he died, last June, Williams had been betting at Ayr races and Shawfield dogs before suffering a massive heart attack. Ten years earlier, he had a triple heart bypass, yet four weeks later he successfully bid for the coveted number two pitch at Cheltenham in the first such bookies’ auction. Though much of his money was made from a bottling plant in Scotland, Williams was known for his duels in the ring, taking every bet the likes of J.P.McManus wanted. We won’t see his like again.
43 - Reg Hollinshead
Thirty years ago, he was the first trainer I met and even then they called him an elder statesman.
At 84, he still holds the licence at the Staffordshire farm that has seen him produce thousands of winners, often at modest level, and a steady stream of well-rounded jockeys (Walter Swinburn included) that have learned under his tutelage. A man of few words and even fewer holidays, Hollinshead is the epitome of the type that eschews fuss and glamour and just gets the job done. He’ll probably still be training horses and riders at 100.
42 - Peter Scudamore
Utterly driven, he was the ideal stable jockey for Martin Pipe and between them they forged a relationship that revolutionised jump racing and won both numerous championships. ’Scu’, who rode almost half of his 1,678 winners for Pipe, usually went off in front and burned off the opposition, a simple tactic that underestimates the meticulous planning of the stable. Comes from a great racing family - his father, Michael, won the Grand National on Oxo, while his sons Tom and Mike are now jockey and trainer respectively.
41 - Sir Michael Stoute
For training Shergar and three other Derby winners. For his nine trainers’ titles. For handling jockeys such as Kieren Fallon and the younger, wilder Johnny Murtagh with a firm, fatherly patience. For being the best and most consistent flat trainer in Britain in the past quarter-century. For his deafening guffaws at his own jokes and for his delight - as a born and raised Bajan - in putting down the England cricket team. Not least, for his well-rehearsed cabaret spin-and-march to avoid talking to the press.
40 - Peter Bowen
He will spend Christmas Day in his horsebox, just as he does most years, but there will be no complaints either from Peter Bowen or his devoted family. Along with wife Karen and his three young sons - one or all of whom will go on to train themselves - Bowen covers a staggering number of miles taking runners from his base in West Wales. It is a triumph of dedication, of hope over practicality, and finally, years after it was due, he is receiving the respect he deserves in good horses and big-race wins. Snoopy Loopy is the jumps horse of the moment and his trainer, having overcome isolation, public ignorance and serious illness, is an example to us all.
39 - Sir Peter O’Sullevan
Every sport has that one voice to identify it. Cricket, for my generation, still has John Arlott, rugby Bill McLaren and golf Peter Alliss. For millions, from addicts to once-a-year punters, O’Sullevan’s deep, rich and comfortingly balanced delivery is the sound of horseracing.
Perhaps his greatest commentaries came when his own horses, Be Friendly and Attivo, won big races yet his professionalism never wavered. He is 90 now, yet still a wonderful orator, not to mention a tireless donator to charities.
38 - Josh Gifford
This gets personal, too. Josh is not only the trainer of Aldaniti and one of the nicest men you could meet. He also kidded himself for years he was good at cricket.
Rather like me. So we were rival captains in an annual game on his local ground, every first Monday in September. It was a ritual for 21 years, until we both got too old. That apart, Josh had been a fine jockey in those cavalier days of derring-do with Biddlecombe et al, then a highly respected trainer. He waited an eternity for his first Cheltenham Festival winner, then cried rivers of joy when it came, just as he did when his final runner won, as if scripted, at his beloved Sandown Park.
37 - Jeff King
When my racing interest was first fired, 30 years ago, Jeff King was the ideal subject matter. We produced a book together on the lifestyle of jump jockeys and the project was an education! King was a tough, durable and technically brilliant rider. Many good judges feel he was the best never to be champion. He also loved the life, the cameraderie and the socialising. Later, as a trainer, his undoubted skills were undermined by too few horses, along with a compulsion to say what he thought at all times.
36 - Peter Savill
Controversial choice, controversial man, but in his six years as chairman of the BHB he came closer than anyone - before or since - to securing financial stability for racing. Savill, who made his money out of publishing, loved racing more than many acknowledged - but he also loved a fight and identified a heavyweight scrap with the betting industry as one he had to win. He was denied the greatest victory of a commercial Levy replacement by an obscure judgment in the European courts. Sadly, his many enemies will blame him for that, along with much else, and ignore the advances acquired by his incisive mind and workaholic nature.
35 - J.P.McManus
While new to racing journalism, I arranged to interview McManus, who had Istabraq going for another Champion Hurdle in those green-and-gold colours of his native Limerick.
We met in the Dorchester, where all the staff deferred to him as they might a president or royalty, and in an hour of trying I got nothing out of him bar courtesy and fine champagne. J.P. does not lightly spill his secrets, just one reason why he is so respected. He is also revered as a man of integrity, loyalty and generosity.
His other reputation, that of a fearless punter, is equally deserved. Owns a dizzying number of horses, including a lot of bad ones, but no one begrudges him his glories, and that says a lot.
34 - Pat Eddery
Hard to believe he isn’t still riding, really. For the best part of four decades, he was out there every day of the flat year, barring suspensions, and the winners tally finally rose to a vertiginous 4,362 - only Sir Gordon Richards has more and he was just before my time. Eddery had his own style, which was mighty effective if not easy on the eye, and his judgment of pace was legendary. Three Derbies, four Arcs and 11 times champion jockey are his legacies but, beneath the taciturn front, he was also great company.
33 - Limestone Lad
A horse hewn out of the same rugged terrain as the hills of his County Kilkenny home, Limestone Lad won the hearts of all Ireland during his phenomenal hurdling career. He won a staggering 35 races in all, many of them at the highest level, and usually with gutsy, front-running tactics.
But it was the story of the horse that captivated so many. He was trained on a remote village farm (a one-horse farm until the fame of the one brought a few more along) by the Bowe family, who could never quite see what all the fuss was about.
A proper hero, he would have brought the biggest Irish invasion of Cheltenham’s winners’ enclosure since Dawn Run had he finished first rather than third in the Stayers’ Hurdle of 2003.
32 - Paul Nicholls
Who knows what records the man may go on to break? Already, having finally wrested the trainers’ title from Martin Pipe and induced the great man’s retirement, he has taken earnings in a jumps season to unprecedented levels and, last spring, trained the first three home in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The whining sceptics say he has all the best horses but how has that happened? Largely, through skills in managing people as well as horses. Nicholls has a legion of rich owners but they have come to him because they trust his judgment and enjoy his company. BBC TV had a Coach of the Year category on its Sports Personality show. It was a scandal that Nicholls did not make the frame
31 - 'Ginger' McCain
Well, you can’t leave him out, can you? A human Aintree legend, the trainer of four Grand National winners and a character for which the term ’larger than life’ might have been invented, McCain is that rare being whose nickname identifies him way beyond the usual boundaries of the sport. Irrascible, immoderate and utterly irrespressible, he was also a one-off in being known almost entirely for one race each year. His son, also Donald but without the ’Ginger’, is already a far more rounded trainer with a thriving yard. But he will never recreate the indelible magic of his father training Red Rum behind a car showroom in Southport.
30 - Giant’s Causeway
The Ballydoyle empire, under its mega-rich Coolmore breeding patronage, has produced countless champions over the past decade but few have captured public imagination quite like Giant’s Causeway. During 2000, he dominated the flat season with an unprecedented five group one wins as a three-year-old. But it was his character and mannerisms that endeared him. This was no flashy speed machine but a grinding battler who wanted to outstare the opposition, to make them blink first. Time after time, he succeeded, breaking the hearts of fine horses and earning the apt soubriquet ’The Iron Horse’.
29 - Terry Biddlecombe
Younger racing folk will know Biddlecombe only as husband of Henrietta Knight, the other half of that engagingly dotty couple responsible for the making of Best Mate. For that alone, he merits consideration but it is for his original racing career - the epitome of the tough, cavalier jockey - that he rates so high. Biddlecombe was racing’s celebrity face in the 1960s - the fair-haired, handsome and devil-may-care champion jump jockey had women falling at his feet (or so he claims) and commanded interest in a way few subsequent jockeys have managed.
28 - Dermot Weld
We are forever being told that flat racing is getting more international but Dermot Weld gave birth to the notion long ago. Weld is an institution in his native Ireland, where he has been champion trainer 21 times, and exerts huge influence over racing, but he has made his name by breaking moulds. First, in 1990, he took on the Americans in their own backyard and became the first European trainer to win a leg of the Triple Crown when Go and Go won the Belmont. Then, three years later, Vintage Crop made more history by taking the Melbourne Cup, previously an exclusively Australasian feast. He won it again in 2002 and is intent on adding to the tally.
27 - Sea Pigeon
For any racehorse owner, Sea Pigeon is the dream, the template. He raced for ten years, flat and jumps, and had the rare distinction of being partnered by Lester Piggott, Jonjo O’Neill and John Francome. He ran in the Derby and, seven years later, won his first of two Champion Hurdles.
Under three trainers - Jeremy Tree, Peter Easterby and Gordon Richards - he developed a style of running in which the excitement was always in the anticipation of his late thrust for glory. He won 37 races in all but many more hearts.
26 - Aidan O’Brien
The acreage of newsprint in homage to Aidan O’Brien is testament to his achievements in flat racing but to appreciate him thoroughly it is necessary to visit Ballydoyle (appointment only). There, in admittedly sumptuous facilities, the man is in his element, communing with his horses in a way that Desmond Morris would have found fascinating. Nothing is left to chance, no little detail overlooked. His staff idolise him but also recognise a boss who works every hour God sends and expects something similar from his disciples. A remarkable man who will continue to dominate for as long as he handles the stress and expectation.
