On our visit to Lord’s that June, we set off in a taxi. There was a huge gathering of people and Terry knew a lot of the guests, in particular our hostess, Rachel Heyhoe Flint. The Long Room is magnificent and we felt honoured to be seated in it. Fortunately, we did not have to make speeches and it worked out extremely well. We just sat up on a raised stage answering questions with Sue Mott. Neil Durdon Smith, Roger Easterby and John McCririck ran the auction.
It wasn’t until it was time to go home that Terry went downstairs to the gents’ loo, where he proceeded to have the most violent nosebleed. He had always suffered from nosebleeds, not just in the years that he was with me. He had apparently been vulnerable to them throughout his life and, as he got older, these bleeds became more and more difficult to stop, despite operations and cauterisations to the offending blood vessels. He was living on warfarin, which is a known anti-coagulant. On that particular night, I became extremely worried. I couldn’t enter the gents myself, but people kept coming out and reporting that blood was pouring from Terry’s nose.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, he re-emerged, holding towels and rolls of lavatory paper. It looked as though he’d been in a boxing match. I could hardly see his face for blood. A taxi was waiting, but it was a scary journey back to the hotel and Terry was convinced that the bleed would restart at any time. We had a bad night and the minimum of sleep.
He still looked a mess the next morning, but we had to catch the early train home from Paddington. He would not let me sponge his face, nor touch it, so I just accompanied him with wads of cotton wool. I’m sure people thought we’d had a serious argument and that I had smacked him on the nose to shut him up. Poor Terry; he suffered so much from those nosebleeds and they were nerve-racking at times. They really frightened me.
CHAPTER TEN
Owners and Trainers
During my years of training racehorses and Terry’s days as a jockey, we met a vast number of owners. They came from all walks of life and represented an extensive cross-section of society. Without owners, racing cannot exist. Many of them invest large sums of money into the game and they are the backbone of the sport, but they do vary hugely in knowledge and attitude.
Certain owners are easy to deal with. They fully understand racing and are good losers when their horses underperform or suffer injuries. Others, who are most likely new to racehorse ownership, may need educating and helping. Trainers need to spend extra time with them, explaining how the system works and what it takes to get a horse ready to run. It is a high-risk sport, not only for the jockeys but also for the horses. There is no such thing as certainty on a racecourse, which many punters find hard to accept.
We were not a gambling yard. I never backed any of our runners and Terry used to have tiny bets of £2.50 each way if he thought one of our horses would run well. Unfortunately, though, betting does play a huge part in racing and, since I was such a hopeless tipster, we lost a few owners to other trainers when their West Lockinge Farm-trained horses did not win.
The unexpected always happens in a training yard. No two days are ever the same, and those of us associated with the industry fully accept that we never stop learning. Training racehorses is full of surprises, as everybody connected to the sport learns to accept. It is essential to be open-minded and to be able to take the rough with the smooth. It was always great for me to have Terry by my side when I was training as he would help to soften the blows when unforeseen events occurred, beyond our control.
Both Terry and I recognised that it was vital to look after our owners. As a jockey, Terry had always loved his public. He had a special way with people. Des Lally, at Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in Connemara, once said, ‘Terry realised that, no matter how important people thought they were, they were never any better than the rest of us. He treated queens, jockeys, waiters, barmen, lords, ladies, dukes, duchesses and sirs all the same.’
At West Lockinge Farm we had owners from many different backgrounds, but Terry treated them all alike. When we went racing he often spent time talking to the gate attendants, the car-park officials or the groundsmen. I would have to hurry him along to saddle up our horses because he was often wrapped up in conversation with racegoers. He never turned his back on anybody. Terry Court – current director of Brightwells – who helped Terry so much on his return to England from Australia and gave him a job with his firm, adored Terry and was one of his greatest friends. He, too, experienced Terry’s love affair with his public. ‘While Biddles was with me I used to carry out the selling races at Bath Racecourse, and in those early days of his employment, I used to get him to drive me to our various appointments.
‘On this particular day, when we drove to Bath, I had already said to him that we would be having lunch in the directors’ room, where they used to keep a little table for me behind the entry door. I told him we would pop in there for a bit of lunch before the seller. We pulled into the car park and when we got out of the car, three of the car-park attendants, realising that it was T. W. B. beside me, rushed up to greet him like a long-lost brother. They were obviously delighted to see him.
‘We then approached the entrance gate where the same thing happened. Gate attendants left their posts and went over to shake him firmly by the hand, and a young lady, who was on duty, gave him a big cuddle and kiss before shedding a tear. We then walked approximately forty to fifty yards to the dining room and within that short distance he was accosted by a number of racegoers who were overwhelmed and thrilled by his presence. When we finally got to the dining room and went through the door there were between twenty to thirty directors and their guests who immediately, when realising who I’d brought with me, all stood up and greeted him to an amazing round of applause, which touched us both greatly. I finished up having lunch on my own. That was a reflection of the high esteem in which Terry was held by the racing fraternity and, remember, Bath is a flat racing track.’
Tim Russon, another good friend of Terry’s, was directing for Central Television in Birmingham in the eighties and he remembers that, ‘Dear Biddles was always friendly with everyone, and everywhere you went he was everyone’s friend. One moment that captures the magic of the man came when we were sent filming to Ludlow to take in the excitement of a special race in honour of the Prince of Wales. There was a terrorist alert on up and down the country, and with Prince Charles at the races to present the prizes, the paddock and enclosures were swarming with Royal Protection Officers and Special Branch. Yet Terry boldly went where no other man would dare to go, marching through every security post and past every guard with camera crew in tow, to block the path of the Prince of Wales as he made his way to the Winners’ Enclosure. The Prince greeted Biddles with the warmest of smiles and firmest of handshakes. They happily chatted away on camera for several minutes as the army of security men twitched and panicked for fear of breaching protection and protocol. But nobody dared do or say a thing because it was Terry Biddlecombe doing the talking and he was somebody special.’
Most of our owners knew about Terry’s past and his love affair with his public and they greatly enjoyed being kept in the picture. Nobody was ever refused a visit, and every month I would write a newsletter. I have kept all of these letters on file and one day I might even publish them for my own interest because, looking back on them, they were extremely informative. Indeed, a number of our owners photocopied the newsletters and sent them on to their friends.
*
Terry and I were extremely lucky to have trained horses for so many interesting people. They trusted us and not only did they learn from us but we learned from them as well. We enjoyed their visits and our talks with them, either on the telephone, in the yard, on the gallops or at the races, but we did have a few set rules. Nobody was allowed to ring us up after 9 p.m. as we considered after that time it was far too late to have a lengthy conversation. Indeed, Terry and I had often gone wearily upstairs for a good night’s sleep by 9 p.m., and if the telephone rang (on my side of the bed), Terry
would unleash a tirade of swear words. He used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you ring that special number and find out what fucker is trying to ring us? Ring him back at 5.30 tomorrow morning and see how that goes down!’ If we had worked a long day we needed a good night’s sleep. We were often extremely tired.
In 2003 we had a visit from a television crew headed by Adrian Chiles. The BBC was making a film of Terry and me for a programme called So What Do You Do All Day? This was before Adrian hosted The One Show on BBC 1 and before he became such a famous sports presenter. Adrian arrived at the back door at 5.30 a.m. He shadowed Terry and me during the feeding, the riding out on the gallops and our day at the races. It was a Cheltenham meeting that day and we ran a horse called Rosslea, which finished second. The film crew was introduced to a number of racing officials and we had lunch in the Royal Box. On the way home, Adrian fell asleep in the back of my car, totally exhausted by watching us work with horses from the crack of dawn until dark.
*
We had a lot of syndicates and partnerships. When they came to visit us, Terry would pick four or five people to take with him in the truck and leave the rest to me or to one of my helpers. He was in his element, transporting them up to the gallops. I dread to think what remarks he made or unprintable jokes he told. He loved to drive his truck as fast as he could across the grass fields and down the hills, finding it amusing if his passengers clung on to the sides or became over-anxious. They often returned to the house either shattered or giggling. How did he get away with asking one owner how she was coping with the change of life, or another hugely respectable lady, whether she had ever had sex over the back of a chair? No wonder they were ready for some refreshments on their return. We usually offered these in the house. Terry loved pouring out the drinks and was particularly proud of his homemade sloe gin.
For my part, I used to take many of the visitors into our dark-green double-decker bus, which was parked halfway up the hill, beside the gallops. This bus was Terry’s idea and we bought it through the Internet. It was old but clean, and it had been well cared for. We bought it in 2003, after Best Mate’s first Gold Cup win. From the upper deck, we could see the entire all-weather gallop and it was fun to watch the horses canter past. It provided a brilliant viewpoint and I often took flasks of coffee and tins of biscuits for elevenses with the owners. I also gave out lists of all the horses and sometimes we put numbered saddle cloths on them as well, for easier identification. Terry loved his bus, turning the relevant handles, until the number on the front read sixty-nine.
*
Sadly, after some years, it was spotted by certain undesirables from the local town of Wantage. Unruly teenagers walked across the neighbouring farmer’s fields to play in the bus. These unwelcome intruders – totally beyond parental control – seemed set on performing acts of vandalism. They hurled boulders and stones at the outside of the bus and smashed the windows. They then pulled out the seats and left them strewn over the grass in the adjoining field. They also used the bus as a lavatory, which meant that I could no longer use it for owners.
When the police were alerted, they seemed to have little interest and turned a blind eye to this shameful behaviour. On one occasion Terry did catch a couple of the culprits. He shut them in the back of his truck and bundled them off to the police station in Wantage. After this incident we were given some of the offenders’ addresses. We tackled their parents, but they were most unhelpful and the vandalism continued. In the end, we decided that, because of the increased juvenile delinquency in our area, the bus would have to go and it was towed away by a local scrap merchant. Terry and I were sad to see it leave the farm. We felt that we had lost a friend – the field looked empty without it and many people in Wantage asked, ‘What has happened to your bus?’ It had become a local landmark.
*
The syndicate owners were usually more challenging than those who owned a whole horse or shared one with a friend. Many syndicate members were new to the game and it was difficult if they didn’t know each other. Disagreements were not uncommon and certain individuals thought they knew more about racing than they did. The dangerous ones were those who chatted to their friends outside the yard and collected conflicting opinions as to how their horse should be trained or campaigned. In other words, they would go behind our backs and stir up trouble, but probably knew little or nothing about horses. Terry always said that if you employ an expert to do a job, then you should trust him to do it correctly: ‘You don’t go to a dentist to have a tooth taken out and tell the dentist how to do it.’
The extra-big syndicates were easier for us and less of a challenge. They were invariably run by experienced individuals, who made the final decisions and told their members how to behave. We trained for Million in Mind, Elite Racing and Axom and these well-established racing partnerships are superbly organised. Their members are well informed and travel to many different yards for visits, but the downside is that their visits are less personal. Terry and I seldom got to know individual members on a one-to-one basis and they were not allowed to travel up to the gallops with Terry’s swear words ringing in their ears. We used to meet them for refreshments in our barn and on some occasions there were question and answer sessions with Terry and me seated on straw bales. The race planning for their horses was always done through their special reps. There was never any question of members querying decisions.
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Sometimes owners came to West Lockinge Farm during the summer months to see their horses grazing in the fields. Brian Hartigan, a prominent member of Executive Racing became a very good friend. He wrote to me after Terry’s death and said, ‘I find it impossible to think of Terry without smiling. He frequently kept me laughing with his stories, I’m sure only slightly embellished at times, and his political incorrectness was a delight. One abiding memory is of a late summer’s afternoon that we spent at West Lockinge Farm. We were joined there by a party of ladies of a certain age. Terry asked me to help him prepare his special-recipe Pimm’s. For “special”, read “lethal”. To the Pimm’s and the fruit he added an over-large amount of gin to take away the sweetness of the fruit. Next was an equally substantial amount of vodka to remove the bitterness of the gin. The amount of lemonade we used to top up the jugs was something like two tablespoons. As the volunteer waiter, I was asked more than once if there was any more of the “lovely fruit cup”.’
Ian Rees, who ran the syndicate for Executive Racing, had become interested in racing as a child. ‘At that time,’ he says, ‘Terry Biddlecombe and Lester Piggott were my heroes. I was always more interested in jump racing, though, and despite only being seven or eight at the time, I loved Gay Trip and Terry Biddlecombe. I remember Terry winning the Mackeson (Gold Cup) on him and then being so disappointed when Terry was injured and couldn’t ride him when he won the Grand National. One day, when I was a child, Terry was riding at Market Rasen and we parked our car in the middle of the course. At that time, the horses walked through the parking area to get to the start on the far side of the course and on the way to the start, Terry got dumped on the ground by his horse. As he sat there, without his mount, he looked up at all the people gathering round and said, “Well, I fucked that up, didn’t I?”’
When Terry died, Ian gave me a rose for my garden called Golden Smiles. How wonderfully appropriate.
*
Then there were the owners who had jockey preferences. They were often difficult to please, since they had read about certain jockeys in the newspapers and had watched them ride on television. They had formed their own firm opinions and wanted their favourites to ride their horses. We always tried to match up our horses with jockeys we thought would suit their ways. Some horses need quiet riders whereas others need strong handling. At the height of our training years, Jim Culloty was our stable jockey, so he was handed the majority of the rides, but there were plenty of good, reliable jockeys who rode out for us at home and helped with the schooling. They, too, deserved their share of the spoils and often
got the leg up in a race. A. P. McCoy was always top of owner Jim Lewis’s list, and he rode some superlative races on Edredon Bleu. However, Jim did listen to Terry and was completely loyal to Jim Culloty when it came to choosing the jockey for Best Mate. Nobody else rode that horse as well. It was as though the two were made for each other.
When owners told us that they had bought the Weatherby’s Programme Book, or had taken out a subscription to The Racing Calendar, our hearts usually sank. They would spot a race in one of these publications and then want to run their horse in it without having grasped the overall picture or understood the handicapping system. Many times the races owners chose were totally unsuitable – either the wrong distances or the wrong courses.
It was even more irritating when certain owners took it upon themselves to ring up the racecourses in order to get an update on the going. No racecourse official much likes being rung up by an owner, whereas clerks of the courses are always willing to talk to trainers. Imagine the chaos if the connections of all the day’s runners on a race day started chasing after racecourse officials to get more information.
Apart from anything else, most owners have never even walked a course and certainly have never ridden a racehorse. They would not understand the true meaning of the words ‘good’, ‘good/soft’, or ‘good/firm’, going. The ground varies considerably from course to course, depending on the underlying soil structure, and even the clerks of the courses can be extremely inaccurate in their assessment of the underfoot conditions. They also tend to paint a better picture in order to encourage runners.
Wherever possible, Terry and I walked the courses ourselves before a race meeting began. In fact, I sometimes went off in the car and walked it the previous day. As far as the Cheltenham Festival was concerned, Terry traditionally walked the steeplechase courses on the preceding Sunday. He much enjoyed this, invariably carrying his long stick and was even photographed one year sitting on a fence to test the stiffness of the birch.
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