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In the summer of 2003, Terry and I were invited to Yorkshire for the annual Timeform Dinner. This is a charity evening and there is always a high-class auction. These dinners started in 1971. By the end of 2014 they had raised over £6.5 million, mostly for Macmillan Cancer Relief. Terry was not enthusiastic about the idea, even though he knew that plenty of friends would be there. He reckoned that travelling to York on a Friday afternoon just for a dinner was something he could easily do without. He hated long evenings. At home he liked his supper in the kitchen at around seven o’clock, before going upstairs to bed to watch his favourite television programmes. As he got older and was in more pain, he used to get extremely tired in the evenings, but still insisted on getting up at 5.15 a.m. every morning to feed the horses.
However, I managed to persuade him that it would be difficult to refuse this particular invitation, since Reg Griffin, Timeform’s chairman, was a great friend. Both Reg and Jim McGrath had put in a huge amount of time and work over the years to organise these evenings, and our neighbour, Charles Cadogan, would also be attending. For twenty-five years, he had sponsored one of the races on Timeform’s charity day at York.
As we took the lift up to the restaurant on the racecourse, we met trainer Peter Easterby. He said to me, ‘Whatever are you and Terry doing here? You must be getting some award.’
He was right. After the hugely successful auction, Reg Griffin announced that Terry and I had jointly been chosen to receive Timeform’s Personality Award for 2003. This was a complete surprise and a great honour. In the past presentations had been made to famous racing personalities including John Francome, Peter O’Sullivan, Lester Piggott, Vincent O’Brien, Henry Cecil, A. P. McCoy and Martin Pipe. I could not believe my ears.
We felt extremely humbled and privileged, and a short film was shown on all the restaurant televisions of Terry and me celebrating the victory of Best Mate in the 2003 Cheltenham Gold Cup, including the big hug I gave him when I ran down the shute to meet him on the racecourse. The Timeform racing personalities are traditionally presented with an engraved carriage clock. Mine still has its place of honour on the dresser in our kitchen.
Other awards also came our way during those golden years: I won the Horserace Writers’ and Photographers’ Association Derby Award for the National Hunt Trainer of the Year in 2002 and Channel 4’s Racing Personality of the Year in 2003. Then I was voted Lanson Champagne Lady of the Year in 2002 and received seven Guinness Awards at the Cheltenham Festival from 2002–04. These prizes were a huge boost to us, validating our training methods and further cementing our special partnership.
They were unforgettable, fairy-tale years, and after the 2003 Gold Cup, I decided to write the Best Mate story. It was not easy to isolate myself, let alone collect and transfer my thoughts onto paper, and at times, Terry felt left out, especially when his dinners arrived later and later. Fortunately, I have always enjoyed writing – a legacy from my university and teaching days – and Chasing Gold became a best-seller. Later, after Best Mate won the 2004 Cheltenham Gold Cup, I updated and renamed it Triple Gold.
Although Cheltenham gave Terry and me our greatest training successes, Best Mate was also successful at Aintree over hurdles in 2000, and at Sandown in the Scilly Isles Chase in 2001. He then won the Peterborough Chase in 2002 and the King George VI Chase at Kempton the same year, as well as taking the Ericson Chase (now called the Lexus) at Leopardstown in 2003. His first chase victory came at Exeter in October 2000, and then he won the Haldon Gold Cup at that course twice in 2001 and 2004. There is a special room dedicated to Best Mate at Exeter, with photographs displayed on the walls. Racegoers there always took him to their hearts, and it is a lovely tribute to him.
Meanwhile, Edredon Bleu always seemed in his element skipping round Huntingdon racecourse and won four consecutive Peterborough Chases there from 1998. He was also victorious in the King George Chase at Kempton in 2003. It was some achievement for a chaser to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham – over two miles – and then prove his versatility by winning over three miles at Kempton. He was a diamond of a horse and, like Best Mate, hugely popular with the public.
The Peterborough Chase proved an extremely lucky race for West Lockinge Farm and we ended up winning it eight times. Camilla Radford’s Racing Demon won it twice, and Impek, another of Jim Lewis’s French imports, was victorious with A. P. McCoy in 2005. The racecourse always gave us a great welcome when we ran our horses on the Cambridgeshire track, and no other trainer has ever registered as many victories in its feature race. Yet, despite many happy days at Huntingdon, there was one occasion in 2001 when I felt nothing but sadness.
My mother took special pride and pleasure in the successes that Terry and I were experiencing. When Best Mate first arrived from Ireland, in 1999, he was stabled in her yard at Lockinge Manor. She used to talk to him every day and watch him leave the stables on his daily exercise. She realised that he was potentially a top-class racehorse and she witnessed a number of his early victories.
On 24 November 2001 I had both Edredon Bleu and Best Mate due to run on the same day: Edredon Bleu at Huntingdon in the Peterborough Chase and Best Mate at Ascot in the Amlin Chase. I had decided to go to Huntingdon since Terry had opted for Ascot. Norman Williamson was scheduled to ride Edredon Bleu and on Wednesday morning he came to West Lockinge to jump him over the fences.
After the schooling session we all gathered in the farmhouse for breakfast, but, as we sat down for a chat, I received a telephone call from the village postman. He said he had just opened the front door at the manor to find my mother lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Both Terry and I dropped everything and drove up to Mum’s house at the other end of the village. We were appalled by what we saw.
She had obviously fallen down the stairs with her breakfast tray. She always took it up to her bedroom at around eight o’clock in order to drink her coffee, eat her toast and read the papers. On this occasion she hadn’t made it. Her three dogs – the yellow Labrador, the nervous collie and the cheeky long-haired dachshund – were wandering about aimlessly. Crockery was strewn all over the hall floor and Mum was lying unconscious among the debris, having hit her head on a skirting board jutting out at the foot of the staircase. It was a shocking sight. I had only spoken to her on the telephone twenty minutes earlier; she had been in great form and was looking forward to coming racing with me on the Saturday. Terry feared the worst straight away and told me to dial 999, then we both sat on the sofa in the sitting room, waiting for the ambulance. There was nothing else we could do. Eventually Mum was put onto a stretcher and taken off to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, but it didn’t look good.
We had five horses due to run that day at Kempton Park Racecourse. I did not know what action to take, but guessed that Mum would still want them to fulfill their engagements. Somebody had to go to the races to look after the owners and Terry volunteered, even though, deep down, he wanted to stay with me and drive me to the hospital. Tragically, Mum did not survive her accident and my sister came down to the Oxford hospital from London. It was shattering for both of us.
Extraordinarily, we had three winners at Kempton. Jim Lewis’s Stars Out Tonight, plus my own horse, Red Blazer, and my sister’s horse, Maximise. It was as though Mum had willed her daughters’ two horses to win. Terry told me he had been utterly miserable at the races and that he had sat on his own for a lot of the time, on a bench at the far end of the members’ enclosure. He hated being separated from me and he adored my mother. When we met up again, later in the day, he was comforting and affectionate, but he was as heartbroken as the rest of us. It was one of the strangest days of my life, but together, Terry and I handled the tears. The following day we had two more winners at Wincanton, but neither of us attended. On Saturday Best Mate was beaten into second place at Ascot by Wahiba Sands, but Terry saddled a young mare called Returning to win the Novice Chase.
Edredon Bleu duly won the Peterboro
ugh Chase and was, as always, the star of the day. I watched him in a daze, still in deep shock from Mum’s death. As a racehorse trainer, however, I had to pull myself together and keep the show on the road, especially as all the horses were running exceptionally well. In fact, in eight days we had a total of ten winners. It was an extraordinary month, but looking back it saddened me that Mum never lived to see any of Best Mate’s Gold Cup victories. She would have been so proud.
At her funeral, Terry was upset because I made him wear a coloured tie – Mum hated black ones. He was annoyed with me for not letting him wear his customary funeral tie and felt that he was the odd man out. It was a deeply moving day and the church at Lockinge was crammed. An extra tent was put up outside. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother attended – she was extremely fond of Mum – and I sat next to her in the church. I read one of the lessons and when I came back to my seat she touched me and said, ‘That was beautifully done.’ I was close to tears, but her words have remained with me for ever. I believe this was the last occasion that she ventured out on a public engagement. She was 101 years old.
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Despite personal tragedies such as this, Terry and I were unbelievably fortunate to have been entrusted with so many lovely horses during our days together. They gave us countless memorable days and highlights that were unrepeatable. I experienced magical moments that I could never have believed possible. No one could have written the script in advance. It just happened.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Other Side of the Coin
Training racehorses may look straightforward from the outside, but, as in all walks of life, there are always downsides. Terry and I experienced some unforgettable highs and many glory days, but we had our fair share of misfortunes as well. Despite outwardly being tough and carefree, Terry was, underneath, unbelievably soft and sentimental. He genuinely cared for people and for animals. It took very little for him to dissolve into tears if something upset him. The everyday ups and downs he could take, but if there was a tragedy to deal with, then it hit him hard.
Terry was an extremely loving man and Elain Mellor, wife of former champion jockey Stan, was one of many who witnessed his gentle side.
During his jockey days, Terry apparently called in to the Mellors house at Middleton Stoney, near Banbury, late one Friday afternoon for a cup of tea and a talk with Stan. When he arrived, Elain was about to set off to Gloucester with their two-year-old daughter, Linz, who was going to stay with her grandparents in Wales. The handover was to be in the car park at Gloucester Market. Since Terry was going back to his own home in Gloucestershire, he offered to take the child with him. Linz was put into the passenger seat of Terry’s car, with no seat belt, and off they went. When Elain’s mother arrived in Gloucester to collect her granddaughter, she spotted Terry’s Jaguar in the market car park but could see no sign of the driver, nor the child. On closer inspection, to her amazement, she found Terry fast asleep with his seat right back and the child asleep on top of his chest. They both looked so peaceful that she found it hard to wake them up.
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Terry was always haunted by the deaths of horses – or any animals he loved. In 1959, as an amateur, he had ridden one of his father’s horses, a lovely French-bred hurdler Or Massif, at Cheltenham. This horse tragically broke its foreleg when falling at the last flight. Terry was only eighteen at the time and was heartbroken. Although he became more resigned to tragedies as he got older, whenever he rode a horse that had to be destroyed it hit him hard. One horse that he particularly liked was Red Thorn, on whom he won the Great Sefton Chase at Aintree in 1964. I have a lovely oil painting in my bedroom of Terry jumping a fence on this beautiful white-faced chestnut. He believed Red Thorn could have won a Grand National, but in 1965 the horse broke his leg at Doncaster in the Great Yorkshire Chase and couldn’t be saved.
When at West Lockinge, both Terry and I had plenty of black days. Some people would say that we were sentimental with our horses and dogs, but we treated them all like members of the family and knew them as personal friends. Every one had a different personality and they were our children. We hated to see them injured or suffering from pain. However, if one trains horses, one has to expect accidents. They are fragile animals – like human athletes. When highly tuned, the injury risks are high, but unless they are hard-trained and raced on the tracks, nobody ever knows what ability they might possess.
During my years of training, we had several tragic accidents at home. A beautiful grey French horse of Lady Bamford’s, Faucon Bleu, broke his fetlock on the gallops, and Silverbar, belonging to the Wyatt family, snapped a hind leg when cantering between fences in our schooling field. He, too, was grey and a brilliant jumper. These two accidents were shocking for the connections of both horses, but they were completely unforeseen. Neither horse had ever had a fall nor shown any signs of lameness in previous months. One winter, an employee of mine fractured her shin bone dismounting from a horse in the yard – a simple accident, but she must have landed awkwardly. The same must have happened to these two lovely horses – if you put your foot down incorrectly, you can shatter a bone. On both occasions Terry was superb. He comforted me, he talked to my staff and he reassured the owners that there was nothing anybody could have done to prevent these tragedies.
In 1997, we trained a stunning looking big bay horse called Wild West Wind. He belonged to Sam Vestey and he won some decent races, including a couple of steeplechases. He was one of the nicest, kindest horses we ever had in the yard. Terry adored him and fed him every morning. Indeed, everybody loved him. But one weekend he became ill. Initially, we thought that he had contracted a form of colic. He wouldn’t eat and looked miserable but he did not thrash around rolling, nor did he have any temperature. The vets were mystified. Early on the Tuesday morning, Terry opened the door to feed him and found him lying dead on the straw. It was one of the saddest moments of my training career. Terry was completely shattered and couldn’t even stay in the yard, but left me to deal with the knacker van and autopsy. It transpired that the horse had died from a ruptured abscess in his intestines. He had been given plenty of painkillers on the previous day so we hoped that he had not suffered too much, but I will never forget that morning – such a waste of a gorgeous animal.
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On another day, in 2001, Terry again showed the sensitive side of his nature. We had a famous retired event horse in the yard called Sir Wattie. When ridden by Ian Stark, he had won the Badminton three-day event twice, in 1986 and 1988, and had represented Great Britain in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Wattie was given early retirement at twelve years old – not because he was unfit to continue his eventing career, but because his owner thought he had done enough competing and needed a happy home. He was sent to West Lockinge to teach the young racehorses how to jump and for me to ride out with the string. He became our yard mascot, but was hopeless on hacks, because he was afraid of traffic and terrified of tractors. Ian told me that he had always been the same, yet never incurred a cross-country fault in all his eventing days and jumped some of the strangest-looking fences, including a fence made up of two cars at Badminton. When Sir Wattie was in his mid-twenties, arthritis set in and he became very lame. Therefore it was decided that he would have to be put to sleep.
He was always spoilt and came into a stable every night. When the vet arrived, one sunny summer afternoon, Terry bravely announced that he would hold Wattie for me. I certainly didn’t want to do this myself; I loved him too much, and I was grateful for Terry’s offer. After the horse had been put down both Terry and Roger Betteridge, the vet, returned to the house in tears.
I have never seen two grown men in such a bad state. They were crying like children and Terry took two days to get over our loss. It was as if one of his best friends had died. It hit me hard, too, but I needed somebody to console me and back me up – I didn’t need Terry to be sobbing in the kitchen. How I wish that we did not get so attached to our animals. They can be such heartbreakers.
Sarah Griffiths, who used to help in the office during my training years, got on exceptionally well with Terry and she told me that, ‘Although Terry was able to be outrageous and shock everyone, he was never afraid to show his emotions either. I remember him being as upset as anyone on that day when Sir Wattie had to be put down. He was the first visitor to see my daughter, Molly, at the Wantage Hospital after she was born. He arrived at 8 a.m. straight from the gallops in his wellies with a huge tin of chocolates. No visitors were allowed in before 10 a.m., so I always wondered how he had talked his way up to my room, I assume he had just charmed all the nurses.’
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In 2004, following his third Gold Cup victory, Best Mate had his customary summer holiday during the months of May, June and July. Nothing was changed. He went out as usual into the field everyday with his best friend, Edredon Bleu, and at night they both came in to cosy, straw-bedded stables in order to be given extra food. Jim Lewis never liked his horses to spend nights outside, in case there were thunderstorms. In mid-July all our horses came back into steady work. They walked and trotted for several weeks in order to recondition their muscles and harden their legs, but still enjoyed their daily turn-outs in the fields. Best Mate looked magnificent – he had summered really well. He was such a handsome horse: a horse to feast one’s eyes upon. He could have won in the show ring. His conformation was faultless.
Not Enough Time Page 15
