Poet, Madman, Scoundrel

by David Slattery

  If you couldn’t be a skinny jockey or a fat owner you could have been a trainer. But it was necessary to find a great horse to make you look talented. Arkle (1957–1970) was just such a horse. He was the greatest Irish steeplechaser ever. Tom Dreaper (1898–1975) is best remembered in Irish history for being the trainer of Arkle. Arkle won the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times in a row, the Irish Grand National, the Hennessey Gold Cup twice, the Whitbread Gold Cup and the Leopardstown Chase. From twenty-eight starts, or races, he won twenty-four prior to being injured in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park, England. Despite breaking his leg, he finished second in that race.

  This legend of Irish horse racing began life in 1956 when his mother, Bright Cherry, visited his father, Archive, for a night, or at least a few minutes of love, known in smutty horse circles as an equine quickie and to polite horse people as a cover. Archive had failed to win a single race in his career. However, his father, Nearco, who was Italian, was unbeaten in Italy, where we must allow that perhaps the horses were slower. His mother, Booklaw, won several classics. Archive’s fee was 48 guineas87 for a cover – he was a cheap gigolo – a fee that had to be paid even if the horses only wanted to talk. However, despite his lack of success on the track, Archive had been doing reasonably as a studhorse, siring five future winners. By coincidence, after the romance with Bright Cherry, his offspring started winning races, driving up the price of a date with him. But as Boss Croker knew and many others have found out since, horse breeding is not scientific. It is closer to breeding people. As it took Arkle five years to mature and demonstrate his qualities, Bright Cherry and Archive were never to repeat their moment of passion. By then it was too late – poor Archive had been bumped off by his owners.

  Arkle was born at 3.30 a.m. on 19 April 1957 at Ballymacoll Stud, Co. Meath, which at one time belonged to Boss Croker. He almost broke a leg when he was just a few months old. When he was exactly a year and a day old, he almost lost an entire leg when he jumped a hedge containing a strand of barbed wire. As he struggled to free himself, the wire dug deep into his flesh and opened a flap of flesh a foot long to reveal his off-fore cannon bone. Forty stitches were required to reattach the flesh.

  Understandably, male horses don’t like to risk jumping prickly fences because of their low-hanging sensitive parts. However, to help them overcome this worry, their considerate trainers cut off the vulnerable parts. Arkle had his cut off in the autumn of 1958. He was then sold at Goff’s Ballsbridge Auction in 1960 for 1,150 guineas. The Duchess of Westminster, Anne Sullivan, from Cork, bought him. When Arkle turned up for training in his new home, Greenogue in Co. Dublin, he got stuck with the new stable boy since he was the last choice of everyone in the yard. As is the way with many great horses, he looked too scrawny to impress.

  Arkle’s first race was at Mullingar on 9 December 1961 with Mark Hely-Hutchinson on board. Hely-Hutchinson, the second son of Lord Donoughmore, was an amateur jockey and Guinness employee. He was the only jockey in history never to win a race on Arkle; he finished third. Seventeen days later, Arkle and Hely-Hutchinson ran at Leopardstown in another Bumper88 race. They finished fourth.

  Arkle had his fifth birthday on 1 January 1962 because racehorses all celebrate their birthdays on 1 January. The life of a professional racehorse is tough. He got neither cake nor cards. But Arkle was made of stern stuff. He hid his tears and, undeterred, he won his first race on 20 January at Navan – a hurdle race for novices over a distance of three miles. He started at 20 to 1 with Liam McLoughlin on board and just flew past the opposition. From then on his regular jockey was Pat Taaffe (1930–1992), who rode him in twenty-six races.

  Like all great athletes, Arkle had a classic rivalry with a contemporary, in his case an Irish-bred horse called Mill House. Although Irish, Mill House was regarded as English in horsey circles because he had emigrated. Arkle lost in his first race against Mill House at Newbury in the Hennessey Gold Cup in 1963. However, he won his first Cheltenham race in 1963, the Honeybourne Chase. But Mill House went one better, winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. They met again the following year at Cheltenham to contest the Gold Cup.

  The 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup was one of the greatest horse races in history. The Irish crowds were for Arkle. The English supported Mill House. Only four horses ran in the race. Arkle won by five lengths and Dominic Behan89 wrote the song “Arkle” to commemorate this famous victory. For his victory in the Irish Grand National that followed, the handicappers had to change the rules to get horses into the race against Arkle, who was made carry an unprecedented 26 pounds more than the next best horse, Flying Wild.

  In 1966, Arkle broke a pedal bone in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park. Despite the injury, he finished second to Dormant, who, though not ironically named, had no broken legs. That was the end of his racing career. On Sunday, 31 May 1970 a vet ended the life of Ireland’s greatest ever athlete with a jab of a needle. He was just thirteen.

  For those in history who thought that horses were too moody, jockeys too skinny and they were not rich enough to be owners, there was always greyhound racing. Dogs are cheaper and don’t need riders, and you could bet on them and lose all your money the same as with horses.

  Gordon-Bennett

  Motor sports are great because they allow competitors to sit down while getting exercise. John Colohan (1862–1932), from Dublin, was a physician and pioneering motorist so he must have known that cars are good for us. He gave up all his medical practices in 1903 when he took up motoring, which became his full-time career. He studied motor engineering in Germany, and learned to drive in France. The Light Locomotive Bill was passed in 1896 in Britain and Ireland, raising the speed limit from 4 to 14 miles per hour. By 1903, this was raised again to a fantastic hair-raising 20 miles per hour. Inspired by the new speed limit, Colohan purchased a 3.5-horsepower Benz Velo Comfortable, and is credited with being Ireland’s first car owner.

  In 1899 Colohan won a wager by driving 135 miles from Dublin to Galway in twelve hours. Obviously, with a time like that, this was before the invention of traffic congestion, in this case, at Kinegad. That time could be achieved only because there was one car on the road. In 1901 he acquired a 7-horsepower Daimler, and then a 24-horsepower one that he souped-up to a massive 30 horsepower, making it probably the most powerful car in Ireland. He was known as the “mad doctor” because naturally only lunatics drove horseless carriages back then.

  He became a founding member of the (Royal) Irish Automobile Club (RIAC) that organised the 1903 Gordon-Bennett race, which was the greatest international sporting event held in the country at that time. According to the race rules, a car could represent a country if the manufactured parts originated in that country. The driver could be from anywhere. The nationality of the winning car parts determined the venue for the next year, or else it could be held in France. A car made from British parts won in 1902. However, the race was held in Ireland the following year because of widespread hysteria in Britain against the horseless carriage. The lawyers, for once acting in the public interest, found that the by-laws didn’t apply in Ireland so racers would be allowed to exceed 20 miles per hour. Support for the race was sought and secured from 120 MPs, 30 county councils, 450 hotels, 13 parish priests, and the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. Colohan’s RIAC were the official organisers.

  The circuit was a figure of eight formed by roads in Kildare, running from Ballyshannon Crossroads to Kilcullen via Athy, and across the Curragh to Kildare Town and back. Three circuits were to be completed, making the course 368 miles and 765 yards in length. The council fixed potholes, straightened bends and even laid a new stretch of road near Portlaoise for the race, so great was their enthusiasm. Hedges were cut, flags erected and an estimated 2,000–7,000 police were deployed. On 2 July the road was closed from 6.00 a.m., all side roads were blocked and all animals were confined to fields. Spectators were ordered to stay behind hedges with their livestock. Compensation of a half-
crown per hen was offered for any hens that were knocked down and killed. The grief-stricken owners of deceased hens were allowed to keep the corpses. During the practice runs, local hen owners placed their fowls on the road and waited to get rich. This is one of the few occasions in history when we know why the chicken crossed the road: because it was pushed. Annoyingly, the hens quickly became adept at avoiding speeding cars so surprisingly few were run over.

  The French brought twenty cars to the race on their own ferry, which was anchored in Dublin Bay. Cars poured in in single digits from Britain and Germany. The Bishop sent out an encyclical warning of the dangers of combining alcohol and race watching, urging his parishioners to restrain themselves until after the race. Twelve racers from France, Germany, America and Britain (including Ireland) started the race. A few of the competitors actually began with their handbrakes on, which stalled their engines. Seven cars turned over or ran into hedges. Charles Jarrott crashed his Napier at 60 miles per hour on a straight road. Dr Kennedy, who cycled to the crash site to administer aid, attended to both him and his mechanic.

  But Kennedy was shoved aside by Lambert Hepenstal Ormsby (1849–1923), who was a self-regarding surgeon originally from New Zealand. He was full of himself because in 1877 he had invented a pocket ether inhaler, which became widely used in anaesthesia worldwide. This notable invention came after his marriage to Anastasia. None of the spectators lurking behind the hedges during the Gordon-Bennett race joked about this, though no doubt they badly wanted to, because everyone was terrified of him. He helped found the National Children’s Hospital in 1887, and was president of the Royal College of Surgeons when the crash happened. Camille Jenatzy, who was a Belgian driving a 60-horsepower Mercedes with German parts, won the race in 10 hours, 18 minutes and 1 second. Jenatzy went berserk when he won and may have needed a whiff from Ormsby’s inhaler to calm him down.

  Stanley Woods (1903–1993), from Dublin, was a confectioner and motorbike racer. Stanley’s father was a sales representative for a confectioner. Stanley persuaded his father to allow him to leave school and take up employment driving his father around the country on his sales route in the sidecar of a motorcycle. Sadly, fathers wouldn’t agree to such crazy ideas nowadays, but Stanley’s father did. From this beginning, Woods became one of the most famous and consistent motorbike racers in Europe. In his first Isle of Man TT race90 in 1924 he caused a sensation by finishing fifth, despite his bike catching fire on the second lap and having no brakes, a circumstance which can actually be helpful in a time trial. In 1925 he won the Junior TT race and in 1926 he won the Senior TT race in a record time, with brakes.91 In eighteen years of competition, he won ten Isle of Man TT races.

  In 1921 he completed the Banbridge “50” with a holly branch replacing his smashed handlebars, and subsequently rode home with the branch to Dublin. He dominated road racing in the 1930s. For a few years in that decade he had his own confectionary factory, manufacturing “TT toffee”. In 1957, aged 54, he set a TT course record of 86 miles per hour. At the age of 87 he completed a lap of the TT course at an average speed of over 80 miles per hour.

  Fellow Irishman Joey Dunlop (1952–2000) ultimately smashed Wood’s TT records. Dunlop won a total of twenty-six TTs. He also won three TT races in one week, three times. His fastest ever lap was 123.87 miles per hour on the TT Mountain Circuit.

  The East German Example

  Historically, it appears that more Irish women partook in warfare than in sport.92 It seems that women would rather fight than take exercise. It is widely believed, at least by me, that the East German post-Second World War sporting authorities dealt with the reluctance of their women to participate in track and field by getting the men to pretend that they were women and compete in the ladies Olympic events.93 From years of sociological studies we now know that an ability to bore is fairly evenly distributed across the genders. It was an important landmark in the history of Irish women’s struggle for equality that they were allowed to be as boring as men in whatever field they liked. This is essentially why they had to be given access to the world of golf. But there will always be a few golf clubs that resist letting them in. How boring is that? Golf has attracted its share of boring women. Rhona Adair (1878–1961) was one such. Adair, like many Irish children, was a golf orphan, having been born into a household of golfers. Her father was a founding member of the Golfing Union of Ireland.

  If you believe golf is boring, then you will think Adair was really boring because she began playing golf when she was eight. She became an amateur international player so her home was stuffed with useless prizes. She even played “Old” Tom Morris in a challenge match at St Andrews in Scotland in 1899, losing by just one hole. Morris, who was the pioneer of professional golf, was actually born in St Andrews, maybe even in a golf course bunker. In 1900 Adair won the long-driving contest (173 yards) at Royal Lytham and St Anne’s Ladies Open. The year 1903 was Adair’s last competitive one. Inevitably, she became lady captain at Royal Portrush Club in Co. Antrim.

  Mabel Cahill (1863–c.1905), from Kilkenny, moved to New York in 1889. She must have been able to play tennis because by 1890 she entered the US Open Tennis Championships. Ellen Roosevelt, sister of the future President Franklin D., knocked her out. The following year she was back. She beat Grace Roosevelt on the way to the final, in which she beat Grace’s sister Ellen to become the only Irish woman ever to win the US Open. She was praised for her “manly style”, which has to make you wonder if we Irish were ahead of the East Germans. Along with Emma Leavitt Morgan, she also won the manly ladies doubles against the Roosevelt sisters that year.

  In 1892 she successfully defended her singles title, beating sixteen-year-old Bessie Moore in five sets. Women used to play five sets back then. I suppose no modern woman could grunt her way through a full five sets and no contemporary audience endure the racket. She defended her doubles title with Adeline McKinley, and won the national mixed doubles title with Clarence Hobart. She was the first player to win all three titles in the same year.

  Cahill wrote a novel called Her Playthings, Men in 1890. She also wrote two articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal called “The Art of Playing Good Tennis” and the essential “Arranging a Tennis Tournament”. She disappeared from history around 1905. She may have died a manly death back in Ireland.

  Amelia Earhart pioneered the tradition of women aviators vanishing into the clouds never to be seen again. But we had our own aviatress in Sophie Evans (1896–1939). Evans took up flying, partly because she had inherited insanity from her father, Jackie Pierce-Evans. He had married the housekeeper, as you do. Soon after Sophie’s birth he was charged with killing her mother, the ex-housekeeper. Perhaps she had begun to neglect the ironing. Crazy or not, he successfully played the insanity card in court,94 and was locked up forever rather than facing the death penalty. Her grandfather in Newcastle West then raised Evans. He sent her to school in Dublin.

  Evans met and married an English army officer in 1920 who had a farm in Kenya in East Africa. She took a degree in agriculture in preparation for a life on the farm. She wrote a book of lyric poetry in 1925, as you do when you live on a farm, called East African Nights. However, her actual nights were more prosaic because the marriage broke down and she fled from Kenya to London to become an athlete. She excelled at the high jump and the javelin. In 1923 she set a world record of 4 feet, 10.5 inches for the high jump, and a world record of 173 feet, 2 inches for the Greek two-arm javelin throw, whatever that is, in 1924. She successfully lobbied to have women included in three events in track and field in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games, where she represented England as a judge.

  By 1925 Evans had become the first female member of the London Light Aeroplane Club. The International Commission for Air Navigation had banned women holding commercial licences, probably on the basis that it was unladylike to be killed. Evans offered herself as a guinea pig, and, as a result of her efforts, from May 1926 the ban on women’s
licences was rescinded.

  She set several important aviation landmarks. She was the first woman pilot to loop-the-loop, and was the first to make a parachute jump. She also set a women’s altitude record of 16,000 feet. She toured Ireland, Scotland and England promoting women’s flying. On one day she travelled 1,300 miles and touched down 79 times in 13 hours. In February 1928 she undertook the first solo flight by a woman from South Africa to England. Along the way she endured sunstroke and had to be escorted into Rome by Mussolini’s air force. When she landed in London she stepped out of her plane wearing a silk dress, fur coat and straw hat, claiming it was so easy for a woman to fly across Africa she could do so wearing a Parisian dress while powdering her nose along the way. The press, who didn’t like her, called her “Lady Hell-of-a-din”.

  She became a commercial pilot with the Dutch airline KLM, and regularly flew the London to Amsterdam route. In 1929 she crashed a plane in Ohio, necessitating the insertion of steel plates into her skull. This resulted in a personality change, with her father’s eccentricities coming even more to the fore. One of her many husbands said of her that she had flown away in the clouds. But this was before the introduction of insanity checks on pilots so I am not sure if she continued flying. She returned to Ireland for a few years in the 1930s, where she became increasingly unstable, poverty-stricken and alcoholic. If she was still flying in that condition her passengers wouldn’t have needed the distractions of in-flight entertainment. She died in 1939 when she fell off a bus. She was commemorated by an Irish postage stamp in 1998.

  Some women were early pioneers of using their sporting interests to endorse a commercial brand. Nannie Power O’Donoghue (1843–1940), from Dublin, became a passionate horsewoman at fifteen. She became the leading horse authority for women in her time. She wrote the successful Ladies on Horseback in 1881 and Riding for Ladies in 1887, which were practical guides covering dress, tackle, hats, seat and horse care. These were a huge international success and helped the sale of her romantic novels.