Lester: The Official Biography

by Dick Francis

  Lester thought that except for Gyr, the opposition wasn't as good as most years, but as Nijinsky's time, untroubled, came within two seconds of Mahmoud's record, one must reckon the colt would have beaten anything that offered.

  Nijinsky went back to Ireland and with Liam Ward in the saddle won the Irish Sweeps Derby. Lester rode Meadowville which had come fifth behind Nijinsky at Epsom. This time, however, there was to be no dramatic upset. Meadowville finished second by three lengths, undisgraced.

  Lester's next outing on Nijinsky was the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. This was the colt's most tremendous performance of all, as he won the six-horse 11/2-mile star event literally at a canter. The previous year's Derby winner, Blakeney, hard ridden, came in two lengths back, with Lester's old friend Karabas fourth.

  With the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby in the bag, Charlie Engelhard decided to go for the St. Leger, hoping Nijinsky would be the first to win the Triple Crown of classics since Bahram in 1935. Before the Doncaster race, however, Nijinsky contracted American ringworm, which had recently been infecting horses in Britain. It takes the form of small lumps under the skin which can spread all over a horse's body. In Nijinsky, who had it badly, it also broke out in spots and made him very irritable. He wouldn't have a saddle on for a while and after he'd recovered it was a rush to get him ready in time for the St. Leger.

  The extra distance of the fifth classic-1 mile 61/2 furlongs-was also a problem, and Vincent and Lester decided he should wait with Nijinsky as long as possible and ask him for speed only at the end.

  With perhaps all this in his mind, Lester fell off at the start of the race before the St.

  Leger, his horse Leander decamping into the middle distance and leaving him stranded. Immediately, as from nowhere, policemen were suddenly running towards him to find out if he was all right. Bewildered, he said yes. He hadn't known until then that an escaped lunatic had been making death threats against himself and Nijinsky. Doncaster executives, who didn't want his corpse on their turf, were taking it seriously. Impressed, Lester returned horseless to change into Nijinsky's colours.

  His saddle, still on Leander, still loose, couldn't be retrieved in time, so he rode with one he borrowed.

  After all these alarms, the race itself went much as planned. Lester waited and waited with Nijinsky and asked him for speed right at the end. It looked an easy win to the crowd, but Lester knew the colt couldn't have gone any further or any faster and had finished extremely tired. Meadowville, as in the Irish Derby, came in second, only a length behind.

  Nijinsky went exhausted back to Ireland where it was found that he had lost forty pounds in weight from the race and the journey, and he was a horse who rarely lost weight at all.

  Charlie Engelhard, all the same, had his splendid Triple Crown, and Nijinsky, with a run of eleven unbroken wins, looked invincible.

  He went to France for the Arc de Triomphe a month later, and because of the French President and his large entourage crowding into the parade ring at Longchamp, he became very fussed, sweating copiously. In Susan's words, "The world's Press and TV were allowed into the paddock and they devoured Nijinsky. A Japanese TV man even put a microphone to the horse's mouth. It was a disgrace, and has never been allowed to happen since. It ruined the horse's nerves and he was white with sweat by the time they reached the course."

  In the race itself, he showed none of his easy early speed and Lester didn't push him because he thought he would pick up later. Turning into the straight a good way back, Lester had to decide whether to go between other horses or switch to the outside. He chose the outside and took Nijinsky to the front with a hundred yards to go to the post.

  Nijinsky was tired, but Lester thought he would hang on long enough. Then Nijinsky started to drift to the left off a straight line, which he had never done before, and Sassafras, one of the horses he had already passed, caught him in the last stride and won by a head.

  It was, Lester says, a big disappointment, a tragedy, and he spent ages afterwards agonising about whether he should have gone through the field, not round the outside, and whether he should have left it even later, inside the last fifty yards, to hit the front. But Nijinsky was stone cold and drifting left, and Yves Saint-Martin, riding the French Derby winner, simply seized his chance. Thirteen days later Nijinsky, seeming none the worse, ran in the Champion Stakes at Newmarket. The public made him an odds-on favourite as usual, but to Lester this great colt had no life left.

  When he tried to take the lead a furlong out, there was no quickening response. He lost to Lorenzaccio, and had trouble even in finishing second. Nijinsky the spectacular dancer had had enough, and had given his last performance. Lester still believes that but for the draining ordeal of the St. Leger, he might have won both the Arc and the Champion Stakes. What is certain is that Nijinsky's progeny will go on winning for generations, as he has proved a mighty sire.

  It was at Newmarket in April 1971 that Lester rode Charlie Engelhard's last winner, Mansingh. The great sportsman, multi-millionaire head of a minerals empire, died suddenly in Florida aged only fifty-four.

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  15 The Row Over Roberto

  "DERBY Storm over Piggott" roared the headlines in early June 1972. "Piggott sparks big race row". Critics wrote letters signed "Disgusted" to the newspapers and journalists jumped in severely with vitriolic condemnations.

  Bill Williamson, who had originally been engaged to ride Roberto, had been told two days before the race that he would be replaced by Lester. The darling of British racing was instantly re-cast as an unsportsmanlike villain, and as usual offered no explanation or defence. Sympathy for Bill Williamson was universal. Lester was booed at the races, which he didn't clearly hear. He had done nothing wrong. He felt none of the shame everyone was busy heaping upon him.

  Lester was often accused of stealing other jockeys' mounts but, in reality, this is impossible. It isn't the jockey who decides. A jockey can say he is available and willing: the decision as to whether or not to put him up rests perhaps with the trainer but ultimately with the owner of the horse. Many, if not most, champion jockeys cast their attention in the direction of horses they would like to ride, if they could. They know that where the stable has a secure top jockey retained, it's pointless going any further, but where the position is less clear, it isn't considered unreasonable to indicate interest.

  Sir Gordon Richards, for instance, did it all the time. His announcements of availability were greeted with unconfined joy, and Gordon rode on hundreds of backs where others had sat before. Everyone knew but no one openly complained, and if the jocked-off jockeys resented it, they suffered their hurt feelings in silence. There isn't a jockey present or past who hasn't been jocked off now and again. It's a fact of life. It's bitter when it happens, but it's the owner's prerogative.

  To take an unheated view of the uproar which surrounded Lester's engagement to ride Roberto in the 1972 Derby, one has first to understand Roberto's owner and then to look straightly at the facts.

  The owner-and breeder-was John W. Galbreath, a trim good-looking American, at that time seventy-three, the owner of the Pittsburg Pirates baseball team and a long-time racing enthusiast who had already owned two winners of the Kentucky Derby.

  He is a nice man, a great sportsman, powerful in opinion and decision.

  "Anyone who doesn't consider the Epsom Derby one of the greatest sports events in the world must be out of his mind," he was reported as saying.

  He had named Roberto after Roberto Clemente, one of the greatest of baseball hitters, and now in 1972 it was time to go for the greatest of all home runs.

  The standing of the Epsom Derby had prompted those other great Americans, Raymond Guest and Charles Engelhard, to send their horses over the ocean to Vincent O'Brien, and John Galbreath dearly wanted Roberto up on the record boards with Sir Ivor and Nijinsky. He would have done anything in his power to achieve it.

  The facts were that Lester could have been on Ro
berto from the beginning, like the others, as Vincent, after three wins in Ireland with his new retained jockey Johnny Roe, sent the two-year-old Roberto to the Grand Criterium at Longchamp in the autumn for Lester's assessment.

  Lester thinks Roberto could have won the French race, but he was beaten into fourth place for three good reasons, all understandable only in retrospect. First, Vincent told Lester the horse liked to be ridden from behind: Lester rode that way but found too late that it was getting him beaten. Second, Roberto was developing a strong preference for left-handed tracks, and Longchamp is right-handed. Third, at that time the French had a ruling that all foreign horses had to be put through the starting stalls before they raced. Roberto was accordingly put through the stalls either on the morning of the race or the day before. (Lester can't remember which; he wasn't on him.) An excitable horse and always on his toes, Roberto was put through the stalls twice. The first time was all right, but the second time he reared and went over backwards, taking skin off his rump as his back went under the gates. It didn't help him much, Lester says, when it came to the actual race.

  Lester all the same would have agreed at once to ride Roberto in the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby had it not been for Crowned Prince, a fine colt trained by Bernard van Cutsem. Crowned Prince also was American-bred and owned and, with Lester at the helm, had in the 1971 season won both the Champagne Stakes and the Dewhurst Stakes, two of the very top juvenile contests. Lester, along with many others, considered Crowned Prince the better Classic prospect and, by the beginning of the 1972 season, he had committed himself to partnering him. The Australian Bill Williamson, who hadn't so far ridden Roberto in a race, was engaged in place of Lester for the Guineas and the Derby.

  First time out, two weeks before the Two Thousand Guineas, disaster struck Crowned Prince. Starting favourite in the Craven Stakes at Newmarket, he produced no response when asked by Lester, and was afterwards found to have developed the breathing troubles known as a soft palate. He had to be taken out of training and never ran again.

  However much they might both regret it, it was too late for Vincent to put Lester back on Roberto. Bill Williamson was not replaced.

  Lester eventually took a ride for Bill Marshall in the Two Thousand Guineas but finished, as he'd expected, in the ruck. Roberto was beaten half a length by Willie Carson on Hard Top, Bernard van Cutsem's stable-mate of Crowned Prince.

  Twelve days before the Derby, Bill Williamson fell heavily in a race at Kempton, chipping a bone in his shoulder and cutting his face. He was unable to ride the following week, and it was debatable whether or not he would be fit again in time for Epsom. If he weren't, Lester would be back on Roberto.

  Lester had been casting about philosophically for a mount in the Derby. He couldn't ride Roberto, and the other two he fancied, Lyphard and Yaroslav, were similarly taken by other jockeys. Lester talked to Vincent about Manitoulin, the O'Brien second string, and Vincent invited him to go to Ireland to ride a gallop on him. Lester went. Manitoulin, a decent previous winner, belonged to John Galbreath's wife: he worked well in the gallop but finished behind Roberto at less than the Derby distance. Lester liked the feel of him well enough, and reflecting also that if Bill Williamson did get fit he at least wouldn't be watching from the stands, he took the ride.

  Bill Williamson naturally did everything he could to get fit, and that was how things stood the weekend before the Derby when the owner John Galbreath came over from America to see his colt perform. He had been slightly out of touch and didn't know the extent of forty-nine-year-old Bill Williamson's injuries. Despite the jockey's protestation that he had mended and was fit, John Galbreath was alarmed. He wanted so very much to win that Derby, not just for the kudos but also for the stud value afterwards. He knew about athletes-his baseball team had recently won the World Series, equivalent of the World Cup in soccer-and he considered that no jockey could be totally fit after a twelve-day absence from the saddle recovering from a fall.

  Fairly, he asked Bill Williamson to ride a trial gallop on Epsom Downs, but Bill Williamson didn't turn up, saying he had overslept. John Galbreath also arranged for him to go for an assessment to the London clinic of Bill Tucker, the sports injury specialist to whom many jockeys took their cracks and sprains. Bill Tucker said after an examination that in his opinion Bill Williamson was fit, but the owner was unconvinced. He wouldn't have fielded a ball-player in a big game on those terms.

  He thought it over and told Bill Williamson and Vincent at a meeting in London's Claridges Hotel that he wanted to take Lester off his wife's horse Manitoulin and put him on Roberto; and he promised the sorely disappointed Australian an equal percentage with Lester of the Derby prize, if Lester should win. On Monday evening, after this meeting, Vincent told the Press of the change of plans.

  Lester knew nothing of this. Far from having with machiavellian cunning got Bill Williamson jocked off, he had been out of the country altogether for two days, riding in France and winning the French Derby. When he returned home on Monday evening, Susan told him Vincent had telephoned to say he would be on Roberto, not Manitoulin, and Lester with some contentment ate his dinner, unaware of the howls of accusation about to break over his head. On Manitoulin he'd had little chance, on Roberto he had more, but he wasn't himself convinced that he would win, not as on Sir Ivor and Nijinsky. To Lester, it was all on a lower key.

  The papers broke the news with scandalised fanfares on Tuesday morning and Bill Williamson, to prove his point, rode in a selling race at Salisbury that afternoon, finishing seventh of eight. This result was an inconclusive pointer to his state of fitness, but he was clearly back in the saddle; and on Wednesday Lester went to Epsom for his date with history, his name unjustly blackened as never before.

  All Bill Williamson said to Lester was, "I don't mind, I'm getting the money anyway," but some of the Press inflamed anti-Piggott feeling by inventing bitter tirades that Bill Williamson never uttered. Although of course he had wanted to ride in the Derby, he had not been over-enthusiastic about Roberto before the Two Thousand Guineas, and not much more after losing that race injudiciously by half a length. He knew also, naturally, that he wouldn't have been on Roberto at all except for Crowned Prince. He was not, in short, an established stable jockey being jocked off by an intruder, and he accepted the revised situation with more resignation than most people gave him credit for.

  As a result of the Press's views, however, one can say that no one except Bill Williamson, the Galbreaths, Vincent and Lester himself really wanted Lester to win that Derby. Certainly the bookmakers didn't, as however much the public might disapprove, they still piled their money on the maestro, and Roberto had been backed down to 3-1 favourite by the "off".

  Roberto, Lester remembers, was a rough, tough-looking horse, not very big, who never felt as if he was doing all he could. He rode him out at Epsom the day before the Derby to refresh their acquaintanceship, and Lester and Vincent agreed that this time Roberto should be up with the leaders from the beginning so as not to leave too much to make up in the closing stages. Roberto ran most of the race in fourth or fifth place behind Pentland Firth, and Meadow Mint, and made headway coming to the last two furlongs. Neither Lyphard nor Yaroslav figured as they had been expected to, and it was Pentland Firth and ultimately Rheingold with which Lester had to contend.

  Rheingold, ridden by Ernie Johnson, was racing on the outside of Roberto and hanging badly to the left, squeezing Lester towards Pentland Firth. A bump or two occurred before Rheingold and Roberto shed Pentland Firth in their wake. Rheingold then continued to hang heavily towards Roberto while remaining about a neck in the lead. As if locked together, though not in fact touching, they sprinted the last furlong side by side, Lester by superhuman strength seeming just at the end to lift the whole weight of Roberto, to drive and inspire and force him to one last-second effort. The straining pair flashed across the line in such close proximity that neither jockey knew which had won.

  Lester dismounted and unsaddl
ed Roberto out on the course, in the placed horses' unsaddling area, and carried his saddle from there to the weighing room. "There's no point in riding into the winner's circle at Epsom unless you're certain you've won," he said.

  He walked through muted crowds who were silent partly from uncertainty about the result and very definitely from disapproval of the last-minute jockey switch. Lester had produced one of the most remarkable riding feats of his whole brilliant career, but at that moment no one applauded. Lester himself, walking in unmoved by the atmosphere, was thinking mainly that even if Rheingold had stayed on and won, he might still lose the race if there were an enquiry. The photograph, however, showed that Roberto had indeed come first - by a nostril, by a scant four inches-and the Stewards immediately announced their enquiry. The subject was Rheingold's failure to keep a straight line, and his hampering and bumping of Roberto. For twenty-two long minutes, the Stewards kept everyone agonising before announcing that the placings would remain unchanged. No action was to be taken against Rheingold which was confirmed as second. Roberto had safely won his Derby, and John Galbreath was the happiest man on the Turf.