by Dick Francis
Of the modern French jockeys, Lester thinks Yves Saint-Martin far and away the best. If he had freelanced, Lester says, he could have ridden any horse anywhere in the world: "Everyone would have been happy to put him up." The two jockeys rode against each other for many years, both in England and France, and respected and liked each other throughout.
Lester much appreciated the conditions in French changing-rooms: far more comfortable than in Britain. The valets there are employed by the racecourses, not by a pool of jockeys, and he never, as on bank holidays and other multiple race-days in England, found his breeches and sets of colours hung on a nail with all dressing, changing and packing of weight cloths to be done in a hurry by himself. One valet to two or three jockeys is normal in France, with someone else to see to the weighing out. With six or more races to be changed for in an afternoon, jockeys value such help.
On account of trainers in general vying for the best for the best, Lester's tally worldwide of classic-equivalents is phenomenal. In France alone he won seven; and it might be helpful to explain what the French classics are called on their home Turf.
The one Thousand Guineas equivalent is the Poule d'Essai des Pouliches (fillies): the Two Thousand Guineas is the Poule d'Essai des Poulains (colts). Both are held at Longchamp.
The Derby equivalent is the Prix du jockey Club: the Oaks is the Prix de Diane. Both are run at Chantilly.
The St. Leger equivalent is the Prix Royal Oak, held at Longchamp.
The shape of the French racing year is as familiar to Lester as the British, culminating of course in the Prix de 1'Arc de Triomphe in October, which he won three times (Rheingold once, Alleged twice).
Alleged, who was never beaten in France, gave Lester his most intense satisfactions in that country, but he remembers also with pleasure the wonderfully prolific Moorestyle, who won the prestigious Prix de la Foret twice, the Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville and carried off the big 5-furlong event (Prix de 1'Abbaye) on Arc day, besides finishing second in the Poule d'Essai des Poulains.
The real impetus to Lester's wider travels was the spread of the concept of international jockey team races. These were originally started by Australia in the nineteen fifties, where three of the states invited teams from the rest of the world to ride against teams of Australians. Harry Carr was one of the first of the British jockeys to go, and soon the contests were popular.
Lester much enjoyed team racing, which took him to places he might not have seen.
He learned a great deal about people he would never have met and saw the similarities everywhere in the widespread and ancient pastime of racing horses. His increasing familiarity with the globe prompted him finally to say, "When you've been so often to so many places, it's all much like going to Brighton."
Lester first went abroad in a team in December 1957, travelling to Australia as the English representative in an international team of one jockey from each of England, Italy, Germany, Hungary, South Africa, India and France. He won down under to great acclaim, being extravagantly described as "the Glamour Boy of,Racing", "the Prince of the Pigskin".
Curiously his saddles were seized and fumigated by customs officials when he arrived in case the leather was carrying foot and mouth disease! Lester later came across a man in Australia who made perfect lightweight racing saddles. He bought twenty of them and used them for years, but could get no more when the last had worn out as the maker had meanwhile won the state lottery and stopped work.
On his way home from that first visit to Australia, Lester rode and won his first race in India, at Calcutta, but in between he made a brief detour to Malaysia. "I like it here," he was reported as saying after riding at Penang. "I hope to come back."
Come back he did, eventually, and in the end almost every year afterwards.
Like other British jockeys, he developed a great fondness for racing in Hong Kong and Singapore ("Nice places"), and would always fly from Singapore to the Malaysian tracks-Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh-with alacrity. One weekend at Kuala Lumpur he won eight races, four each day.
He often rode work for Ivan Allan in the mornings round Singapore's great Bukit Timah racecourse; the course where they test every horse's urine in the morning before it runs in the afternoon, and where nicotine turned up once in a sample because a stable-lad who smoked had got tired of waiting for his charge to perform!
Lester won six Singapore classics, five of them for Ivan Allan. In between such triumphs, he sunbathed round the pool of the Goodwood Park Hotel, entertained friends, had suits made for him practically overnight. Staying with him there for a week once, I could see why he liked it.
As a member of a team, he went several times to South Africa, riding in Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town and Johannesburg. The tours there used to last for a good two weeks, and once in Cape Town his horse broke a blood vessel in the very first race, falling and injuring Lester's knee. To his great disgust, he had to spend the whole of the rest of the visit hobbling around on crutches, watching his colleagues have all the fun.
Teams from other countries have given good value also in England, huge crowds for instance flocking to places like Sandown Park to see America's great Willie Shoemaker matched with Lester, to see Angel Cordero and Lafitt Pincay take on Pat Eddery and Willie Carson.
In races like these, the jockeys usually draw for the available mounts, which means that they're always on horses they've never seen before. There's a good mixture of luck, therefore, in the results, although the theory is that it's here that the jockeyship counts. Serious gamblers, not surprisingly, keep their money in their pockets.
The problem with team racing, of course, is that none of the races themselves are of huge stature with prize money to match. Owners are considered gallant for lending their horses, though what they have to fear from the top ranks of any country's jockeys has always seemed to me to be nothing. The success of any series of invitation races depends very largely on the mounts on offer being reasonably good.
Although Lester went once or twice to the United States as part of a team, it was as an individual he made most mark. He would have ridden more there were it not that the weights are lower than in Britain. The top weight in very many races is 8 st. 4 lb., Lester's absolute lower limit; and in consequence there are now very few American-born jockeys, most coming from the shorter and lighter peoples of places like Panama and Puerto Rico.
It was often in turf races (as opposed to dirt) that Lester triumphed, including his three Washington DC Internationals at Laurel on Sir Ivor (1968), Karabas (1969) and Argument (1980).
Of racing there in general he says, "Nobody bothers much about being on the inside in America. The horses always swing wide coming into the straight and it's easy to get a run through wherever you like. Usually the best horse wins, as they go so fast right from the beginning. Often the first three-quarters of a race are faster than the finish. Lots of races are framed to attract the best horses, because those are the ones who bring in the customers. A very good horse won't be handicapped out of running: there's never more than 20 lb. between top and bottom weight. Entries in most races have to be made only two days before, except for big races like the Kentucky Derby."
It's all faster, more fluid than in England, congenial to someone who could choose his Oaks mount four hours before racetime on the basis of the baking morning sunshine on the course.
At one of Lester's last meetings in America, the Breeder's Cup day at Aqueduct, New York, in November 1985, I went down to the jockeys' changing area to find him. He wasn't there, and he should have been, as in the US jockeys are not allowed to wander around freely between races, as in England. The official in charge there was most annoyed that he was missing.
Lester, as it happened, was at that moment being feted, honoured and thanked for the pleasure he'd given everyone for so long by the President of the racecourse and the assembled executives and Stewards. I was still waiting when he returned from this back-slapping interlude and when he explained where he'd
been, the aggrieved official gave him a right ticking off all the same!
Sublime to ridiculous, I thought: and a summary of the way Lester had been treated a great deal too often.
Apart from an official or two, there is worldwide regret that the long fellow won't be back to take away breaths in a tight finish. Apart perhaps also from jockeys worldwide, who won't have to beat him any more and can sleep more easily in their beds.
Lester has been the most international of all jockeys, a forerunner in demolishing barriers, unequivocally welcomed, trusted, and everywhere cheered. There hasn't been much of the backbiting abroad that he's had to put up with at home: as the Bible says, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.
Lester's standing overseas is high. He was an exceptional voyager; an ambassador, in his own way, for what's best in sport.
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24 Commanche Run and After
LESTER made a slowish start in 1984, accelerating from zero to full operating speed only in the second half of April and not winning any big races until late in May: but then, in a space of two weeks, he won four. The first two were a double on Khaled Abdulla's Adonijah, first in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown and next in Derby week, in the Pacemaker Diomed Stakes, the opening event of the Epsom meeting. Two days later on the same course Sheikh Mohammed's Prince of Peace obliged in the Northern Dancer handicap, both of the Arab-owned horses being trained by Henry Cecil.
The fourth big race, momentously for Lester, was the Oaks.
He'd had no success in the year's Classics until then, neither of his Guineas mounts producing much and his Derby Hope, Alphabatim, coming in fifth. In the run up to the Oaks, John Dunlop asked Lester to partner Circus Plume whom he had taken to victory, first time out, in the Sir Charles Clore Stakes at Newbury three weeks earlier. With no Henry Cecil runner to cloud the issue, Lester accepted.
On paper, it looked an open race with no foregone conclusions, and so it proved in the event. Optimistic Lass, ridden by Walter Swinburn, started favourite at 7-2, with Circus Plume, owned by Sir Robin McAlpine, second favourite at 4-1. Poquito Queen, with Steve Cauthen, came next.
These three fillies all moved forward three furlongs out, as did a fourth, the 66-1 outsider Media Luna, ridden by Paul Cook. Circus Plume took the lead about 2 furlongs from the winning post and looked certain to stay there. Then Media Luna, the unexpected, sharpened her pace and put her nose decisively in front, and it took all Lester's force and resolution to regain his advantage. He won with not many yards to spare, by a neck.
There was more to that win for Lester than just another Classic. It was his twenty-seventh, the all-important figure which drew him level with a record that had stood for a hundred and fifty-seven years. Frank Buckle, between 1792 and 1827, won the Two Thousand Guineas five times, the One Thousand Guineas six times, the Derby five times, the Oaks nine times and the St. Leger twice. A jockey of incredibly durable talent, he went on riding until he was sixty-five, and until Lester came along it looked as if his record would be safe for ever. There are far more runners now than the small fields of four, five and six that Buckle had to beat, also more trainers, more jockeys, more money poured into bloodstock. In a different world, equalling the ancient record was a triumph indeed. The Epsom crowd, which knew the score, made the welkin ring.
Not that, for Lester, twenty-seven were enough. A dead-heat wasn't the same as a clear lead. With time running out as he came into the homestretch of his career, he began thinking of twenty-eight.
With the St. Leger runners still a misty line of possibles, however, he filled in time with a continuing flurry of big prizes such as the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Lancashire Oaks and the Princess of Wales Stakes at Newmarket. Next came the blazing highlight of Teenoso's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes and, after that, three days later, he won the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood on Commanche Run.
Commanche Run, owned by Lester's Singapore friend Ivan Allan and trained by Luca Cumani, had earlier in the season been ridden to victory by Darrel McHargue, the American jockey newly working as Cumani's stable jockey, but when Lester rode the colt at Goodwood, Darrel McHargue was sitting out a suspension.
Lester had won for Luca Cumani several times over the eight years the young Italian had been training in Newmarket, and he had won much oftener for trainer Ivan Allan, principally in Malaysia and Singapore. His tally of Singapore classics for Ivan Allan stood at five: the Queen Elizabeth II Cup in 1972, the Lion City Cup twice, in 1976 and 1977, the Tunku Gold Cup, 1979, and the Singapore Derby, also 1979.
The professional association and personal friendship between Ivan Allan and Lester was of long standing and great depth. Lester had often ridden the horses the Singapore trainer owned in England. It wasn't unreasonable, in the face of all these facts, that Ivan Allan should want Lester to ride Commanche Run in the St. Leger.
Luca Cumani, notwithstanding Lester's 5length win on the horse at Goodwood, wanted his stable jockey Darrel McHargue to be back on Commanche Run for the Doncaster classic. There was a severe and public clash of loyalties, with Lester as usual being allotted the blame. Ivan Allan's loyalty was to Lester, Luca Cumani's to Darrel McHargue; but the owner who pays the training fees has the right to decide.
Three days before the St. Leger, with the fuss over riding plans raging away, Commanche Run fell on the road while out at morning exercise and cut and grazed his knees. Luca Cumani had to work night and day to get him to the post, skilfully keeping infection and swelling at bay with icepacks, and he delivered Commanche Run fit and well-but untypically sweating-to the test.
The opposition he faced was formidable, including Alphabatim, Lester's Derby mount, and Baynoun, on which Lester had won early in the season. As usual, he knew almost a third of a field of eleven at first hand, and had raced against several of the others. He thought the question marks over his chances were, first, the grazed knees and, second, whether the distance of 13/4 miles would be too far for his mount.
In the race, riding with inspiration, he rubbed out the question marks in no uncertain fashion. He designed the first of the sort of races later so familiar to Commanche Run watchers, taking the lead after entering the straight and challenging all else to pass.
Baynoun ahead of Alphabatim struggled to do just that all the way up the long straight, Steve Cauthen riding at full stretch, but with strength and willpower Lester got Commanche Run home by a neck.
Alphabatim, Crazy and Shernazar (Shergar's half-brother) followed in a bunch, less than two lengths covering the first five horses. It had been a hard, remarkable race, and with no disrespect to Darrel McHargue everyone at Doncaster could see clearly that Lester and only Lester could have kept Commanche Run's nose in front.
He was cheered over and over as he was led in, as he dismounted, as he unsaddled.
He was smiling non-stop. He had beaten history and Frank Buckle. He'd amassed the magic twenty-eight. It was, for everyone there, a tremendous day.
Lester's own words, discussing the event with me in retrospect, were simply, "He ran a very game race and he was able to win."
Never one for histrionics, Mr. Piggott.
Luca Cumani, greatly pleased, made no complaint about Lester riding Commanche Run ever after. He is, Lester says, a very good trainer with a great sense of humour.
They first met in Italy, when Lester won the Italian Derby on Luca's father's horse, Cerreto. Luca, six feet tall, was at that time riding a lot of winners himself; a first rate amateur jockey, Lester says.
In Lester's final season, 1985, Commanche Run developed splendidly in scope and power. First time out, at Sandown Park, he won very easily by 12 lengths. After that he went to Royal Ascot for the Princess of Wales Stakes, but he didn't seem to be himself that day. He got worked up before the race and didn't run well, finishing third to Bob Back and Pebbles, beaten 11/Z lengths and a short head. When a horse doesn't feel well, it's often impossible to know the reason.
Next time out, Co
mmanche Run went down to the start for the Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown, but Lester dismounted when he reached the stalls, feeling that his mount was lame. Lester thought the problem might be in the horse's stifle (a joint high on the groin) and the starter didn't demur. The horse was trotted round, and it was clear all wasn't well.
Lester, and the starter also, looked at the horse's feet, but could see no trouble there.
There was nothing to be done, however, but to withdraw without coming under starter's orders, disappointing though it was for Ivan Allan who had come from Singapore for the event.
Commanche Run went home to Newmarket where it was found that one of the nails securing his racing plates had penetrated a foot: and it took a long while to heal as the horse didn't have very good feet in the first place. He had to miss the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes because it was still bothering him, and he couldn't run again until the Benson and Hedges Gold Cup at the York meeting in the middle of August.
"He wasn't a hundred per cent that day," Lester says. "I was trying to save the horse a bit, knowing that he wasn't really wound up. I didn't want to go too fast on him. The other jockeys let me set my own pace, though, which suited me, and when I quickened up in the straight he just had enough at the end to last. But if someone had taken me along faster all the way, he'd never have got the trip."
