Lester: The Official Biography

by Dick Francis

  The Minstrel, one of those many horses with a left-hand preference, had swerved left on the righthand Curragh, an echo perhaps of his drift leftwards first time out at Ascot.

  It was to Ascot all the same that he went next, to the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes a month after the Irish Derby. On the very hot and humid day, The Minstrel's coat was shining with sweat, and as usual he was slow out of the stalls. As in the Derby, the Sangster colours bobbed along in the rear for about half a mile before making a move forward, but this time Lester came round the bend into the straight no nearer than sixth. He continued to make smooth progress and passed the long-time leader Orange Bay a furlong from the post. It looked all over bar the cheering.

  Orange Bay, however, ridden by Pat Eddery, behaved as if insulted and refused to give in. He was on the rails, to his advantage, with Lester on the outside; and he fought back all the way. It was the hardest of battles of balance, and endurance, two horses and two jockeys united in art, strength and inbred indomitable will to win.

  It could have gone either way. It went to Lester and The Minstrel by a short head; perhaps by an inch or two further than Roberto had won the Derby. Lester this time, however, was confident and rode into the winner's enclosure to ecstatic acclaim.

  The Queen, in her Silver jubilee year, presented the de Beers diamond prizes, and later in the afternoon Lester thanked her by riding her a winner on her own horse, Valuation. Pictures of the Queen with Lester always show them both smiling: no doubt they usually meet in moments of victory, but their shared understanding and devotion to racing comes over clearly as a positive warmth.

  The five owners of The Minstrel debated and argued for quite a while over the colt's future programme, but in the end he ran no more races. E. P. (Eddie) Taylor, who had bred him in Canada, bought a half-share back for four and a half million dollars, and The Ministrel departed in a hurry to his Maryland farm in September. The haste was owing to an equine genital disease which had temporarily closed (among others) the National Stud: no one wanted The Minstrel to be stranded if the Americans, like the Australians, put a ban on the import of stallions from Britain. The Minstrel ran nine races in all. Lester rode him every time except the first: lost two, won six. The whole of Jubilee year was for Lester a right royal procession, his quicksilver last-second finishes bringing off hats and coups from Goodwood to York.

  Vincent's other best colts all had their days, including the beaten Derby pair, Valinsky and Be My Guest. In August, Sir Charles Clore saw Valinsky do him proud in the Geoffrey Freer Stakes at Newbury, and at Goodwood two weeks later Mrs.

  Manning lived through one of Lester's heart-stoppers when Be My Guest brought her the Waterford Crystal Mile by a hard-ridden head. Be My Guest turned out later to be a prolific sire of first class winners, ironically topping The Minstrel.

  The late-developers, Artaius and Alleged, grew in prowess every month, Artaius coming to a glorious peak at Sandown in July, when he made all the running and broke the course record in winning the Joe Coral Eclipse Stakes for Mrs. George Getty II. Still on a high, he equally dominated the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood, Lester dictating the whole pace and shape of the race from start to finish.

  If Artaius was great, Alleged was greater-in the end. Although he won his first three races of the season, they were all pitched low to match his current abilities, and no one thought a great deal of him. Not until the middle of August, when it was as if he had metamorphosed into a different horse: and he never did well, it transpired, until late in the year.

  Vincent decided he was ready for the Great Voltigeur at York, the faithful public instantly making him second favourite with nothing much to go on. Best backed was Hot Grove, who had given The Minstrel so much trouble in the Derby. The new Alleged made mincemeat of Hot Grove and everything else. Lester took him straight into the lead at the beginning and he coolly stayed there, accelerating when asked three furlongs out and winning literally at a canter by seven lengths. Hot Grove finished fourth, and Orchestra, who had beaten Be My Guest, finished fifth. A good many eyes opened very wide indeed, and Alleged's_ forthcoming appearance in the St. Leger was all of a sudden taken to be a formality.

  Everyone reckoned without the Jubilee. The year was the Queen's own and her greatest in terms of classics. Her great battling filly Dunfermline had won the Epsom Oaks, but having shown no speed in the Yorkshire Oaks later, went to Doncaster as a query spent force.

  Willie Carson demonstrated that she was no such thing. Alleged took the lead easily entering the straight and looked a winner until two furlongs from home, when Lester found himself working to keep his position. Dunfermline passed him a furlong and a half out and won decisively by one and a half lengths. The cheers erupted for the Queen, and a thoughtful Vincent took Alleged back to Ireland and wondered about the Arc de Triomphe. The owner in whose colours the colt had run, Californian Bob Fluor, sold most of his one-fifth share in disappointment to Robert Sangster who already owned two-fifths.

  Alleged, Lester says, was one of the very easiest of horses to ride. He would always do as he was asked, always give whatever he was capable of at any particular moment. Lester liked to ride him in front because that way he could set the pace himself. Many jockeys don't like to lead and many trainers and owners don't like to see their horses in front early on, but with the right mount, it's the way to stage-manage the whole play.

  Because of Lester, the 1977 Arc de Triomphe was to begin with a comparatively slow-run race. After two furlongs, he took the lead which no one else wanted, then dictated the pace he felt right and shook up Alleged coming into the straight, surprising and slipping the field and sprinting to victory.

  To the crowd it looked all too easy. So does conducting a symphony to anyone but a musician. Alleged, the home camp felt, would go from strength to strength as a four-year-old, and in some ways they were right. He was faster at four, a late developer coming to his peak.

  First time out in 1978, he won a modest race at the Curragh in May against four opponents, starting at 7-1 on. This was planned as a step on the way in his preparation for Epsom's Coronation Cup, but the firm ground at the Curragh almost put an end to the horse's career, Alleged jarring himself to such an extent that Vincent was unable to do much with him until the approach of autumn. Then, as in the previous year, he seemed to change entirely, his vigour flooding in on a healthy tide.

  The Arc de Triomphe again was his target, one of the few major races left.

  Sharpening him to fitness a scant two weeks before, Vincent sent him to Longchamp for the Prix du Prince d'Orange, generally accepted as a suitable preliminary. Alleged and Lester not only won easily against good opponents but broke the course record.

  Sighing with relief, Vincent took his revitalised horse home and returned him to France for the Arc itself on 1 October. On the day, Lester was afraid the ground would be too soft for Alleged because the colt liked good ground to be at his best, but he had the highest regard for his speed. "He could have won a six-furlong sprint when he was a four-year-old, he was that good."

  For the second year running, the Arc was a slow-run race, playing right into Lester's hands. He didn't need to lead because another horse was prepared to, and he sat poised in second or third place until two furlongs out. When he set Alleged going, it was quickly all over. He swept to the front and could have gone further away. The winning margin was officially two lengths, and the effort involved was "comfortable".

  It was Alleged's last race. In spite of discussions about the Champion Stakes and the Washington International, it was felt that he had already done enough, and he was syndicated for stud. Thanks to Vincent's care in choosing suitably moderate races within his early powers, Alleged was beaten only once. He was, Lester considers, the easiest to ride of all the great horses he partnered.

  Back in jubilee year, with the double "Arc" still unthought of, Lester won the Ascot Gold Cup for the third time on Sagaro. It has become fashionable to decry Flat horses that can stay o
ver distances of two and a half miles. Encouraged by generous sponsorship, the rage is all for nippy two-yearolds, for three-year-olds who can barely make the Derby distance, for fast turnovers and quick results. Stayers can be treated with condescension.

  Sagaro changed all that, at least for one day, producing at six years such juvenile speed as to leave a distinguished field of younger horses look ing foolish. Trained by Frangois Boutin in France, Sagaro made his third Ascot raid look easiest of all, although it was the first time ever since the race was inaugurated in 1807 that it had been won three times by one horse.

  "The pace was pretty well flat out all the way," Lester says, "and Sagaro could have gone round again. Most of the others could hardly walk at the finish."

  Between the heights of 1977 there were, as usual, depths. Into the "most gloomy" category came the loss of his driving licence for six months, the result of two speeding offences, far apart in time of occurrence, coming into court within three days of each other. He got off the first time but the second lot of magistrates thought enough was enough. He'd been clocked at 91 m.p.h. and the police had had a job to catch him.

  Into the "most dangerous" category came Durtal, the filly who could have lost him his life.

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  19 Injuries: Part 2

  THE size, noise and nearness of the Epsom crowd in Silver Jubilee mood on Oaks day, 1977, stirred the excitable filly Durtal to a state near hysteria. (A pity she had no cotton-wool in her ears.) Trained by Barry Hills, owned by Robert Sangster, and having won the Cheveley Park Stakes most promisingly as a two-year-old, Durtal started her three-year-old season well with a win in the Fred Darling Stakes at Newbury in April and a third in the French One Thousand Guineas on 1 May.

  At Epsom, after the parade past the stands, Durtal set off back towards the start of the Oaks at a canter which quite soon quickened to a runaway gallop, impervious to all stop signals from her jockey. At a point up on the far side of the parade ring at Epsom, one has to steady to a walk and bear left to go along a lengthy railed stretch of Downs to reach the starting point of the Oaks and the Derby; it's a stretch which isn't wide as it's used for access only, not in races, and it can't be seen from the stands.

  Durtal showed no signs at all of understanding the situation and pulling herself up.

  Lester, faced with a head-on crash against the far end of the parade ring area, hauled her head towards the path to the start. Durtal turned, crashed against the rails, and didn't stop. All that happened was that her saddle slipped backwards, leaving Lester without any possible control over her panic. Her pace increased. Lester tried desperately to remain on her back, lurching first to the left and then to the right. The saddle slipped completely down Durtal's right side, taking Lester with it. His foot slid through the stirrup and the stirrup leather twisted.

  It happened at such speed that he could do nothing to avoid it.

  The bolting Durtal dragged him at a full flat-out gallop along the ground for almost a hundred yards, her sharp hooves slashing the air all around him. Lester, trapped in the most dangerous of all riding configurations, had time to think that he would quite likely be killed.

  His deliverance was as accidental as his predicament. Durtal, frenzied, crashed again against the rails and, by incredible luck, the stirrup iron around Lester's ankle hit a post and broke. Lester fell free to the ground and Durtal fell over the rails, staking herself in the leg and then bleeding.

  Lester wasn't bleeding. He went back to the weighing-room, had a cup of tea, rode again a couple of races later and won the last race, cool as cool.

  It was afterwards that the shock really hit him: when he turned white at the thought of what he'd survived, and spoke about it with fear tightening his vocal chords, sharpening the pitch of his voice. Now, years later, he refers to the brush with death calmly as "something that happened", but I talked with him soon after, while the experience was fresh, when his mind was still filled with remembered horror, and at that time he thought it the worst that could ever happen.

  He's changed his mind, since.

  The worst, in Lester's history, faced a good deal of stiff competition, even before 1977.

  After the 1964 crash in Paris, there were some relatively accident-free years, but in 1966, on the evening before he was due to ride Charles Engelhard's Right Noble in the Derby, he began to suffer excruciating pains in his side. A doctor, called in, said Lester had a kidney stone on the move, which he would pass or not pass; one would have to wait and see.

  Lester spent the night in recurring bouts of great pain as the stone moved down through the abdomen, and the next morning, in the same state, went to Epsom. This was the very year when he was making the stand to leave Noel Murless. This was the very week of the Oaks he had gambled his future on winning on Valoris. There was no way, that week, that he was going to be ill in bed.

  He won the first race of the day, but in the Derby itself, Right Noble, not the best of Vincent's stars, could finish no nearer than seventh behind Charlottown. The jockey seemed to feel nothing during the races, and sometime afterwardsbefore the Oaks-got rid of the kidney stone in the normal course of events.

  Several people thought him more taciturn than usual, that Derby day.

  In 1970, when Lester was cantering back after a race, a horse stumbled and threw him over its head.

  It was the last race at Newbury on a Wednesday in June, and Lester, picking himself up, thought nothing much had happened. By the time he'd changed, however, he couldn't put his foot to the ground without pain and could hardly walk. He went immediately to see the orthopaedic surgeon Bill Tucker in London, who gave Lester two sticks to support him, telling him to come back for investigation and treatment the next day.

  It transpired that Lester had broken the long bones in his foot, but in such a way that although he could hardly walk, he could-and did-ride horses.

  Bill Tucker, that invaluable patcher-up of countless injured jockeys, worked habitually on the principle that if someone believed they could ride, then they could, broken bones or not. Fitness, in his eyes, was as much a state of mind as of body, which was one of the reasons he passed Bill Williamson as fit to ride Roberto, and why, in my own case, he once made a removable plaster for a broken forearm, to take off for racing and to fasten back for support after.

  Bill Tucker strapped Lester's foot tightly in supportive adhesive bandage, not in plaster, and told him to keep it cold.

  Lester, in a larger-sized shoe and unable to walk without help, went over to Ireland to ride Meadowville in the Irish Derby. That was on Saturday, three days after his fall.

  David Robinson, owner of Meadowville, was horrified. Lester, he said, couldn't possibly ride with a broken foot. Certainly he could, Lester said. Riding was quite different from walking. His foot didn't hurt him, on a horse.

  David Robinson and trainer Michael Jarvis helplessly and in bewilderment agreed to let him ride. Lester sat in the changing-room at The Curragh with his foot in a bucket of ice until race time, then he put on one of his grandfather Ernie's racing boots-which were larger than his ownand, holding onto someone for support, hobbled and hopped out to the parade ring.

  It was as he'd said. He was all right on a horse. Meadowville didn't win only because he was beaten by three lengths into second place by Liam Ward on the all-conquering Nijinsky, not through any inability of his jockey.

  Lester was due to ride two more horses for David Robinson the following afternoon in Paris. Unable, in face of proof of the contrary, to say Lester was incapable of performing, the owner compromised by removing his jockey from one horse only, that running in a long-distance race. Lester, accordingly, accompanied everywhere by ice-packs and followed by Susan and friends carrying his saddles and other gear, limped at high speed by air to Orly and Longchamp. The race he was still to ride was the Grand Prix de Paris; the horse, Roll of Honour. Helped like a cripple out of the parade ring, Lester confounded all doubters by winning by a neck.

  From France, Lester
and Susan went to Spain for him to ride in more races: and Spain was so hot that the ice-packs melted between hotel and racecourse.

  The foot took a while to get better, Lester says, but of course it did in the end. He walked out with scarcely a wince in July to win the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Nijinsky.

  Several of Lester's injuries were less public, although giving him equal trouble. In the year of The Minstrel, for instance, a few weeks before the frightening escapade on Durtal, he badly hurt his thumb at Lingfield, in the Derby Trial. His horse reared in the stalls, tangling Lester's hand in the barred metal walls and wrenching the thumb backwards so forcefully that a main tendon was stretched beyond being able to function. Lester couldn't afterwards bring his thumb across to touch any finger: it flapped uselessly, without strength.