Not Enough Time

by Henrietta Knight

  After Terry died, Martin wrote this: ‘I can remember coming home from the dentist (which I hated) when I was 16, then going into our red sitting room at home and watching a horse win on the television, owned by my dad’s friend, Sid Billing. It was at Sandown on 7 December 1961, and the horse was Fisherman’s Song, trained by Eddie Reavey. It was ridden by Terry Biddlecombe. We were all very excited and little did I know that, later in life, I would become a racehorse trainer and meet my then-idol many, many times. Terry was a swashbuckling jockey, a supreme athlete and ahead of his time. He lived life to the full and could still have ridden successfully beside today’s jockeys. Terry and Hen came for an overnight visit a few years ago and we had a delightful time together – great fun. It was so nice to see them so happy: “best mates” together.’

  Terry always respected Paul Nicholls and enjoyed talking to him at racecourses. Paul said, ‘Terry was a larger-than-life character who always said it like it was. I remember one of the first times I trained a winner he said to me, “I’m glad you can fucking train, because you couldn’t fucking ride!” I was incredibly fond of Terry and he always had time for a chat, even if it was nearly always regarding a colourful subject.’

  *

  One of the trainers Terry rode for at the end of his riding career was Richard Head. He told me that he has memories of a party at Newbury Racecourse, given by Derby-winning trainer Dick Hern in about 1970, when Terry was absolutely at the top of his riding career with Fred Rimell. ‘He came into the room looking like a Greek god: slim, golden-haired and walking tall. He exuded confidence, optimism and bonhomie. Everybody’s heads turned. He had terrific charisma and he charmed the room. I was so impressed by his presence at the time that I have never forgotten it.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Passion for Cheltenham

  When Terry and I began to share the training of our racehorses, we were rewarded by plenty of winners. Looking back, people will say that we were primarily known for the training of Best Mate to win three Cheltenham Gold Cups, and Edredon Bleu to win the Champion Chase and the King George VI Chase. However, we did achieve many other successes with horses of varying degrees of talent – maybe not stars, but, nevertheless, consistent and rewarding at their own level.

  However, right from the beginning, it was the victories at Cheltenham Racecourse that gave us the greatest thrills. It is the mecca of National Hunt racing and had always been Terry’s favourite course. He had a number of victories at Prestbury Park, as well as his fair share of down days. The racecourse is set like an amphitheatre beneath Cleeve Hill, and on festival days the atmosphere is electric. It mesmerises racegoers. The excitement and thrills are so addictive that fans return to see the action year after year.

  Terry was Gloucestershire born and bred and he always had a host of local well-wishers. Even when he returned to the racecourse in his later years, his public still welcomed him with open arms, and Cheltenham pulled Terry to it like a magnet is pulled to an iron bar.

  However, its significance to me was slightly different. It was at Cheltenham races in October 1993 that I spent that memorable day with my future husband. The year I fell in love with him.

  In my teenage days, I remember seeing Terry’s name – T. BIDDLECOMBE – on the old number board beside the weighing room, painted in bold white letters on black wood. There were no electronic screens in those days. When Terry retired from racing at Cheltenham in 1974, he was given that board and I now have it hanging up in my office at West Lockinge Farm. I will treasure it for ever. On that historic day when Terry hung up his boots, his last race was aboard Amarind in the Cathcart Chase. He was a big, strong chestnut horse from the USA, trained by Fulke Walwyn. He finished fifth. Richard Pitman won the race on Soothsayer, a gorgeous-looking dark-bay steeplechaser also from America trained by Fred Winter. Richard remembers walking down the chute to the main racecourse. It was lined with Terry Biddlecombe well-wishers, so he took a pull on his horse and let Terry lead the runners out onto the track. The crescendo of cheers from both sides of the course was deafening, like a Mexican wave. Many thousands of racegoers had stayed behind to witness Terry’s retirement ride. He was the A. P. McCoy of his day. The public adored him.

  *

  Back in 1967, Woodland Venture won the Cheltenham Gold Cup with Terry in the saddle. The horse was trained by Fred Rimell. It gave Terry a day to cherish for the rest of his life, but the race had almost been a non-starter for him, thanks to a bad fall the previous day from Glenn in the Cotswold Chase. He had been kicked and badly trodden on. Andy Turnell, a top-class jockey and a good friend of Terry’s, remembers, ‘His breeches had been all but ripped off him. He had lacerations to his bollocks and was bleeding profusely. He was in a dreadful state and the remains of his breeches were red. However, in typical Terry fashion, he got the skin stitched up by his favourite Irish doctor, Doc Wilson, who also gave him an injection for a badly bruised knee. So effective was the injection that, the next day, he went on to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He was a tough man, but how he got through the pain barrier, nobody will ever know. On the day of his fall he must have been in agony but he even rode in the next race: the Champion Hurdle.’

  Nowadays, Terry wouldn’t have been allowed to ride with a local anaesthetic in his knee. Painkillers are strictly monitored. In fact, most of his contemporaries in the sixties and seventies would have failed dope tests and the breathalyser as well.

  *

  After Terry died, I had many wonderful letters, and one, in particular from Mike Newman, Josh Gifford’s cousin. He later became head groundsman at Huntingdon Racecourse and was always a great ally. ‘I would like to recall an early experience with the boys at Cheltenham in the sixties, the year Josh rode What a Myth. We all met in the car park: Josh, Terry, David Nicholson, “Tumper” Lehane, Macer Gifford and John Gamble. We went in through the old western entrance. On entering the paddock, we approached a small door at the bottom of the main stand. Josh knocked, and lo and behold, we were ushered into the Cellar Bar, with the steward saying, “Usual sir?”, upon which, a bottle of Bollinger and glasses were duly provided. We all sat on beer barrels and enjoyed more than one bottle – and this, I assure you, was only five hours before Terry went out and won the Gold Cup! I remember it clearly.’

  Arthur Moore – the well-known Irish jockey and Tommy Carberry’s brother-in-law – also remembers an occasion from the Cheltenham Festival. Terry shouted across the room, ‘So where are you staying tonight, Tommy?’ to which he replied, ‘With the Queen.’ Not, of course, to be taken literally. It referred to where many of the jockeys stayed and partied – in The Queen’s Hotel in Cheltenham. But Arthur said it was a highly amusing answer at the time. He often witnessed those fun days on the racecourse and the post-race parties.

  It was with the knowledge of Terry’s incredible Cheltenham background that I set forth to secure my own festival winners. Nobody knew better than Terry how the racecourse should be ridden.

  In 1997, Karshi won the Stayers’ hurdle at the big March meeting. He was trained from West Lockinge and he provided me with my first festival success. It was an emotional day. Karshi was owned and bred by my brother-in-law, Sam Vestey. My sister, Ce, who had suffered that life-threatening stroke in November 1995, had somehow managed to get to the racecourse to watch him win. It was unbelievably exciting, especially since jockey Jamie Osborne made virtually every yard of the running. This victory gave me a taste for further festival success.

  When Jim Lewis sent us Edredon Bleu from France at the end of 1996, and then bought Best Mate in Ireland in the spring of 1999, we had no idea that from then on right up until 2004 these two horses would cement our arrival into the big time. Blue and Matey, as we nicknamed them, stood out as our stars because of their amazing consistency and soundness. Neither horse ever missed a season. They were clean-winded and had wonderfully strong legs. They never let us down. Both horses shone at Prestbury Park.

  Edredon Bleu provided us with our second festival
win when he was victorious in the Grand Annual Chase under A. P. McCoy in 1998. He was also second in the Queen Mother Champion Chase the following year, to Call Equiname, but it was his victory in that prestigious race in 2000 that will go down in history as one of Cheltenham’s most exciting finishes of all time. A. P. rates that victory as number five in his top-ten successes, but for Terry and me, it was number one.

  In that race, Edredon Bleu gave a demonstration of breathtakingly quick jumping and showed not only courage but also the utmost determination – both of which are great attributes in a steeplechaser. He simply would not let his opponent, Direct Route, beat him, even though he was headed between the last fence and the finishing line.

  I couldn’t watch it live – it was too much for me. I just walked round by the weighing room and under the number board to listen to the commentary. Even then, there were times when I had to block my ears, and waiting for the result of the photo finish seemed to take an age. To win Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s own race, and for her to be there to present the trophy made it a surreal day. She was such a great supporter of National Hunt Racing and I had known her personally for over thirty years.

  *

  From the late seventies up until 1992 I was privileged on many occasions to have been one of the Queen Mother’s houseguests at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. Every July, she held a big weekend party for the famous King George VI and Queen Elizabeth flat race at Ascot Racecourse. She would invite about five married couples, plus four or five unattached friends. My mother and father knew Queen Elizabeth extremely well. She visited their house, Lockinge Manor, each summer for lunch and knew I was passionate about racing. We had many talks about her National Hunt horses. She even personally wrote some treasured letters to me about her horses – one of which was reprinted in William Shawcross’s book, Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

  It was a great honour and privilege to be invited to stay with her, but I needed to be on my best behaviour and make sure that all my clothes were clean, well ironed and neatly packed. Each year I bought new white underwear for those weekends because the guests’ suitcases were unpacked by members of the staff at Royal Lodge. I used to have a shop-up at Marks & Spencer every June and buy new knickers, bras and petticoats.

  My bedroom was the same one each year: a lovely big room with a huge double bed and an adjoining bathroom. The windows looked out over the garden. Before I changed into a long dress for dinner each night, a clean bath towel was draped over the back of the chair in the bathroom and a lovely hot bath was run for me. The bedroom was full of flowers – mostly roses – but these were removed every night and put on a table on the landing, because flowers give off carbon dioxide in the dark. It is probably why, nowadays, no patients are allowed flowers in hospitals.

  The dinner parties were memorable and we each had a handwritten menu. There were liveried waiters and superb food and wine. After dinner the women invariably left the men and went to the drawing room. I often sat beside Her Majesty on a big sofa and discussed racing. She loved music, and later in the evening one of her guests would play the grand piano and we would have a sing-song. Sometimes Queen Elizabeth would put some old 33 rpm records on the gramophone and there would be dancing. Looking back, they were amazing weekends – days that will go down in history.

  It was only when I met Terry and he started living with me that I was taken off the guest list, but we both continued to be invited to Royal Lodge each year to the cocktail party after the Grand Military Race at Sandown Park in March. I was able to show Terry exactly where I had stayed during my single years. Like everyone else, he adored Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and was lucky enough to ride horses for her on many occasions – in particular, Game Spirit, on whom he finished third in the 1974 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Later, she sent him two signed photographs, which I had framed. They hang in the hallway of the farmhouse. When Her Majesty lunched with my parents, Mum always invited Terry and me to attend and there were plenty of good racing memories.

  *

  After Edredon Bleu’s victory in the 2000 Champion Chase, there was the excitement of the prize-giving and Queen Elizabeth’s presentation of the trophies. It was an unforgettable occasion. When Jim Lewis and his wife, Valerie, had received the owner’s winning cup, I walked up onto the rostrum with A. P. McCoy behind me. Luckily, I had no trouble with my curtsey, but I was amused to see on the replay later that the winning jockey also executed a curtsey. It was a brilliant day and what a race to win. My mother was there too, and had lunched in the Royal Box. She was understandably extremely proud.

  Two races later we had our second winner of the day. Lord Noelie, with Jim Culloty in the saddle, won the Sun Alliance Chase for his hugely enthusiastic syndicate. We immediately became part of another round of joyous celebrations. Terry and I hugged each other again and again. We could hardly believe that we had trained two festival winners on the same day.

  There was no Cheltenham Festival in 2001 because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. Racing was not allowed. The disease was a disaster for the country and for farmers. It also represented a considerable financial loss to those who relied on the festival to provide a large proportion of their yearly income; hotels, guest houses and restaurants were particularly hard hit. For our part, as trainers we were bitterly disappointed that we could not run Best Mate in the Arkle Chase. He was ante-post favourite and Terry and I both felt sure he would have run well. We had to wait until 2002 for our next taste of festival glory, but from then on our fortunes in the blue riband of steeplechasing – The Cheltenham Gold Cup – rose to giddy heights. Best Mate won his first Gold Cup in 2002, then repeated this victory in 2003 and 2004. Even after his first win, our lives began to change. We had a horse in our midst that everybody wanted to own. We were in possession of a precious jewel and it was now our duty to keep him safe.

  *

  During those early years which marked the beginning of the new century, Best Mate’s popularity soared to colossal heights for a steeplechaser. Racegoers love a rising star, and the Best Mate fan club had begun. Best Mate’s admirers constantly clamoured to come and see him, or get news of his day-to-day life. At that time neither Facebook nor Twitter existed. If people wanted updates, they had to telephone, write a letter or send a fax. Yet, it wasn’t only the racing public that took an interest in our new phenomenon; the press did as well. Best Mate was photographed and filmed like a movie star.

  I was deeply touched by all the attention and had never before experienced anything like it. I wanted to reply to everybody and acknowledge the kindness of our supporters. When we went on holiday in Ireland during June 2002, I packed an extra suitcase and filled it with fan mail. I stayed indoors for several days and answered letters while Terry tried, unsuccessfully, to catch a salmon. I sent small individual photographs of Best Mate at Cheltenham to everybody who had sent their congratulations.

  We did not spend long away from West Lockinge Farm during the summer of 2002. We didn’t feel properly relaxed leaving the horses behind and preferred to be at home to watch over our new wonder horse.

  In July of that year, I was approached by Channel 4 with a view to filming Best Mate during the build-up to the 2003 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Being superstitious, I was hesitant at first, fearing that filming might jeopardise his chances of a second win, but in due course the film crew moved in and we spent some extremely happy days working with them. Best Mate’s victory in the 2002 Cheltenham Gold Cup left me in a state of bewilderment, but Terry had always believed the horse would win. It is true that Best Mate had been ultra-consistent in his races, never finishing out of the first two placings. Yet, for me, it was hard to believe that the little farmyard at West Lockinge had been able to turn out a Gold Cup winner. It’s the race everybody dreams of winning – the pinnacle of steeplechase racing – and it has eluded many top trainers.

  The excitement of that first victory remains crystal-clear in my memory. I hadn�
��t watched the race with Terry, but when I ran down the pathway from the paddock to the racecourse I found him sobbing with joy beside the railings where the horses walk back. I threw my arms around him and we hugged each other tightly, unable to hide our emotions. My blue suit and Mum’s pearls had turned out to be lucky, as had Terry’s yellow tie and battered old trilby hat. Out of superstition, we wore the same outfits in 2003 and 2004 for the next two Gold Cups. We kept everything the same and, by 2004, I had perfected my run to meet Terry.

  Best Mate undoubtedly made my career and certainly brought Terry and me into the public eye, while in our private lives, the Cheltenham Gold Cup victories brought us even closer together. We lived for each other and we lived for Best Mate. It always amazed me that Terry never showed a hint of jealousy, although I was officially Best Mate’s trainer and he had twice been refused permission to train when he had retired from race-riding. We shared our successes equally. It was always a joint effort; Terry never cared about paperwork, it didn’t bother him that it was my name on the licence. He was unbelievably supportive, and after a notable win would often say, ‘Hen, this is your big day.’ Having experienced numerous such days himself, he just seemed proud that I could have my days in the sun as well.

  With Best Mate, Terry and I had both been given a huge responsibility. We structured our lives around him but he was a pleasure to train. The longer we had him, the more we loved him. His charisma and charm were always apparent. He was a real showman and a horse who always wanted to please. He really enjoyed his work. Indeed, rather like Terry and me, he got bored if his holidays were too long. He thrived on action and adventure. Racegoers called him ‘the people’s horse’ and he thrived on the adulation. The nation adored him. He was good for racing and thoroughly deserved to win jump-racing’s Horse of the Year award twice in 2003 and 2004.