Friday 30 December 2011

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Some More Odds and Ends

1964 Stewards Cup - Dunme (Paul Cook) left, wins from Weepers Boy (Stan Clayton) right, and Prince of Orange (Keith Temple-Nidd) tucked in behind the winner.



1964 - Jimmy Lindley unsaddles St. Leger winner Indiana with trainer Jack Watts looking on.



1965 - Ebor H'cap winner Twelfth Man and Paul Cook.


1967 – Champion Hurdle winner Salmon Spray leads Flyingbolt who finished in third place over the last, behind are Talgo Abbess who finished fourth and Sempervivum who ran on up the hill well to take second place.



1967 – The Noel Murless trained St. Padarn (George Moore) storms home in the Prix Quincy at Deauville.



1968 - Early morning exercise for Sir Ivor and Lester Piggott.



1968 - Royal Palace and Sandy Barclay.



1969 – The powerful colt Irish Mail 11 (Eric Eldin) nearside, wins the Andy Capp H’cap at Redcar but following a steward’s enquiry is subsequently disqualified and placed third... The race is awarded to Good Apple (Willie McCaskill) on the far side.



1969 – The Shrivenham stakes at Newbury and Raffingora (Lester Piggott) cruises home from Willipeg (Jimmy Lindley) one from the right, and The Pack Horse (David Maitland) left.


1980 - Eclipse Award winning photo of Great Prospector biting Golden Derby during the Tremont Stakes at Belmont Park. Golden Derby, under Darrell McHargue, led all the way for a neck victory over Great Prospector ridden by Jorge Velasquez.


Saturday 24 December 2011

The Abominable Queen of the Turf - Dorothy Paget


She was worth £100m and bet £4m at a time. She ate like a horse, smoked like a chimney and despised all men: Meet the abominable Queen of the turf

By Christopher Wilson June 2010


She was as eccentric as she was rich - and since she was worth the equivalent of £100 million, that made her some eccentric. She hated the sight of men so much that she claimed they made her physically sick. When she went to the theatre, she would order an extra seat for her handbag. When she travelled on a train, it would have to be the whole carriage. When she needed to pass water, she would call for a horse-box.


Nothing about the Hon Dorothy Paget was normal, from her clothes to her friends to her eating habits. She hated the colour green - yet called her staff not by their names, but by colour-coding. She slept all day, and then spent all night on the phone to her bookmaker. No wonder she was given the title Queen of the Turf  -  the amount she splashed out in pursuit of the gee-gees was enough to singlehandedly keep the British bookmaking industry afloat for years.


Tomorrow at Epsom - Derby Day - old men in top hats with long memories will raise a glass to Dorothy, the greatest female racehorse owner the British Turf has ever known. It will be 50 years since she died, but among the vast panoply of colourful characters who have flocked to the Derby ever since, there's never been anybody to match her.


Born in 1905 the daughter of an English aristocrat and an American heiress, Dorothy inherited most things at birth - except good looks. Dorothy was a shapeless, humourless hulk of a woman whose life, it would appear, was driven by the catastrophic irony that even with her millions, she would never attract a man. It never stopped her for a moment. Her ancestors had conquered the fledgling American nation with their coal and steel empires, their railway interests and their shipping lines. Her British forbears were true-blue aristocrats, tracing their ancestry back to Henry VIII.


She was a friend of royalty and behaved as if she were the Queen herself. A spoilt child, she soon awoke to her poisoned legacy of excessive wealth and remarkable ugliness. She was expelled from six schools, starting with Heathfield, near Ascot, and ended up in a school run by a Russian refugee in Paris. Here she found some consolation in the company of a fellow-pupil, Princess Marina of Greece, who was later to be a lifetime friend and marry the Duke of Kent. 


Her mother died when she was ten, and her father remarried: Dorothy was left alone with her money, and a sister she could not bear. She started to gain weight  -  by the end, she would weigh 20 stone, which was to curtail her love of hunting. But the thrill of speed had her in its grip and she sponsored motor racing before turning to show jumping.

Then came the racing proper... Dorothy spent the equivalent of tens of millions making her way to the top of the racehorse world, inspired by her grandfather William C. Whitney, a former U.S. Secretary for the Navy who won The Derby in 1901 with Volodyovski. In all, her horses were to win a total of 1,532 races on the flat and over the sticks, winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup seven times, the Derby (with Straight Deal in 1943) and the Grand National. But she never got a man.


Dorothy Paget with her 1943   
Derby Winner Straight Deal    
'Dorothy Paget paid little attention to her appearance and on the racecourse invariably clad her bulk in a substantial speckled blue tweed coat,' wrote her obituarist, coolly. 'Not easily approachable, she was domineering, often abominably rude. 'When, in the winner's enclosure, she congratulated Golden Miller (her five time Gold Cup winner) it was remarked that this was the first male she had ever kissed. Then someone pointed out that Miller was a gelding!' The only men she could tolerate were her male trainers, but her attitude to them could be summed up by the day her horses won five of the six races at Folkestone. Instead of cracking open the champagne like any other owner, she hauled in the trainer Fulke Walwyn and made him sit in another room while she shouted imprecations through the doorway. 'Go and kick him in the balls!' she ordered a startled female friend, Peggy Whitehead, who witnessed the event.


She bet in millions… She always backed her own horses, but according to racing expert Professor Wray Vamplew: 'Financially her sojourn on the Turf was a disaster, costing her over £3 million (£90m today). This was in addition to her vast gambling losses. She bet huge sums daily. Her largest recorded bet was £160,000 (£4m today) to win £20,000  -  and though this was successful, others were not.' In 1948 alone she lost over £100,000, the equivalent today of £3m. No wonder bookies employed people to stay awake all night just to take Dorothy's calls. She would even sometimes bet on a race that had already run, promising the bookies that she did not know the result.


Restless, chain-smoking a hundred a day, she was the ultimate compulsive gambler. And an arrogant one too, according to her biographer Quintin Gilbey, she knew nothing about politics but declared herself an ardent Conservative 'because I dislike being ruled by the lower classes'. During World War II, she wrote to the Minister of Transport asking for a special dispensation that she could reserve a railway carriage to herself, because sitting next to a strange man 'is liable to make me vomit'. Her request was refused - but very few others were.


When her Rolls-Royce broke down on the way to a race meeting, she bought the local butcher's van to complete the journey. Then, when she got home, she ordered another Rolls-Royce so that one could follow the other in case such an eventuality should occur again. It never did, but when two Rolls-Royces approached a racecourse, everybody knew Dorothy Paget had arrived. At the racecourse, she would not allow her horses to go home until she had climbed into the horse-box to relieve herself; and if the lad had mistakenly put the horses in, out they would have to come until the ritual was completed.


She had no sex life but nursed an unrequited passion for Olili, the niece of her former Russian school ma'am Princess Vera Meshchersky, who came to run her stud in Britain. Domestic life at Hermit's Wood, her mansion in Buckinghamshire, kept the staff on her toes. She would eat dinner at seven in the morning, followed by a long sleep. Breakfast would be at 8.30 in the evening, when staff would receive their instructions - by letter. Her gardener was never allowed to mow the lawn during the day, even though he protested he could not see to mow it at night. And someone had to make sure the underfloor heating in the dog kennels was switched on. By midnight, Dorothy was ready to telephone her trainers to discuss the next day's racing, and when one of them tried to put a stop to it by disconnecting his phone, she had someone go round and wake him up to tell him to reconnect it. She would then settle down to play cards with anybody who had the strength to stay the course through the night.


Twelve days before her 55th birthday in 1960, Dorothy Paget was poring over her racing calendar and wondering which racehorse trainer to call next. It was 4.30am in the morning when she suffered a heart attack, and went to that great winner's enclosure in the sky, leaving behind her - after all the horses she'd bought, after all the gambling losses - a fortune which today would be worth £100m.

She was indeed, for all her cranky ways, the true Queen of the Turf.

Monday 19 December 2011

Some more of Piggott

The boy wonder... 12 year old Lester Piggott pictured at the start of his career when he set the racing world alight with his powerful displays.


Twelve year old Lester prepares to ride work at his father's Lambourn stables during his first year in racing before dashing off to school... Waiting for him is The Chase, his first-ever winner.


A grim-faced Lester Piggott leaves the weighing room at Newmarket to ride Zina into second place in the 1950 Cambridgeshire. Piggott had just learned from the stewards that he was to be suspended for the rest of the season for an incident in an earlier race.


Another nice photo of the Boy Wonder
 

One master talks to another ... Sir Gordon Richards chats with Lester at the special Savoy Hotel dinner in 1954 to celebrate retirement.
 

Lester aboard the brilliant filly Petite Etoile being led in by Prince Aly Khan with Travelling Head Lad Jim White alongside after winning the 1959 Epsom Oaks.
 

3rd of August 1960 - Sometimes it hurts… Barbary Pirate deposits Lester near the winning post at Brighton as Colin Moss on Bob Barker goes on to win the race.
 

An outstanding trainer and jockey… Findon wizard Ryan Price is captured in pre-race poise as he stresses a point to Lester, who is his usual unflappable self.



Lester and wife Susan flanked by daughters Tracy (left) and Maureen, a three day eventer.
 

'Nijinsky's best ever display.' That's how Lester described Nijinsky's win in the £31,000 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. Vincent O'Brien obviously agrees as he leads in his hero... Among his victims that day was 1969 Derby winner Blakeney.




Saturday 17 December 2011

Druids Lodge

The Druids Lodge Confederacy… Also known as The Netheravon Confederacy and sometimes referred to as The Hermits of Salisbury Plain.


Druids Lodge is tucked away in the heart of the Wiltshire Downs, at Middle Woodford, near Amesbury, and eight miles from Netheravon in one of the loneliest parts of Salisbury Plain. The stable was little known to the outer world until the first dozen years of the last century, when the “Druids Lodge Confederacy" got to work, and made Druids Lodge the terror of the bookmakers.


Jack Fallon, an Irishman, was installed as trainer for as shrewd a collection of owners as have ever gathered in a stable. One was Captain Frank Forester, a wealthy man, who was connected with the now extinct dukedom of Cleveland the first Duchess was the famous Barbara Villiers, who bore a son to Charles II. Others were Captain William Bagwell Purefoy, Edward A. Wigan and Holmer Peard all of whom were Irishmen, and finally A. P. Cunliffe. To complete the Irish flavour their jockey in most of the successful enterprises was Bernard Dillon.


Their huge coups soon became the talk of the racing world, and their deeds were invested with mystery and speculation. What was certain was that the happenings at this remote spot were never allowed to leak out. Because of Druids Lodge's isolation, strangers were rare, and if one did become inquisitive he was spotted instantly. Stable lads were forbidden to place bets except through Fallon, or even to mention horses in their letters home.


Presiding geniuses of the group were Cunliffe, with his cold, clear brain, and Purefoy. Another extremely clever member was Peard, a noted veterinary surgeon. He it was who gave advice about the many horses bought in Ireland, and which were developed on the Druids Lodge gallops. Captain Forester, too, knew much about the Irish scene, for before taking up residence near Druids Lodge he had been master of foxhounds in Ireland and was steeped in horses.


Jack Fallon, if not a training wizard, was very competent indeed. So was Tom Lewis, who succeeded him in 1906. The practice of this clever coterie was to buy for small sums at the sales or out of selling plates horses that had little form, build up their real capabilities on the Druids Lodge gallops, and then get them into handicaps at weights that made them betting propositions.


Naturally such a procedure demanded great judgment of horses. An outstanding example was Hackler's Pride, whose victory in the 1903 Cambridgeshire first brought the “Confederacy" into the public eye. Hackler's Pride, bred in County Limerick, was by Hackler out of Comma, the latter a mare so moderate that she was not good enough to win a Hunt Cup race for horses that followed the Eglinton Hounds. When, sold originally at Ballsbridge, Hackler's Pride fetched only 75 guineas, she ran second in a juvenile plate at the Curragh and in her only other race in Ireland was unplaced in a nursery at Cork Park. She was then resold for a small sum and sent to Fallon in England. The money was recovered quickly and with interest, for she won the £1,000 Chesterfield Nursery at Derby. A second in the £1,000 Whitsuntide Plate at Hurst Park as a three-year-old provided the stable with a further line to her usefulness, and after failures in the Wokingham and Stewards' Cup she was entered for the Cambridgeshire, being allotted 7st. 1lb.


Fallon soon found they had something to bet on, and told Purefoy that he had 10lb in hand. "Not enough" said Purefoy. “When you've allowed for a further 7lb in case of accidents we'll start betting." Fallon was able to give the assurance, and, immediately the ante-post books opened, commission agents all over the country got busy. It is estimated that on this Cambridgeshire the layers stood to lose about £50,000 before the wider public became even aware that the horse was fancied. More and more bets were placed, and in subsequent years it emerged that the Confederacy had cleaned up £100,000 in all… a sum which is in excess of £9.5million in today’s money. Jack Jarvis, then an apprentice, claimed the 5 lb. and rode Hackler's Pride at 6st 10 lb. She won almost as she liked, the margin being three lengths. She had two defeats as a four-year-old, and was entered in the Cambridgeshire again. This time she was placed on the 8st 10lb mark. The stable went for another fortune, and pulled it off, but only by a neck. It is estimated that on this occasion the bookmakers parted with about £80,000... Which is just over £7.5million in today’s money!


Not content with this dual victory by Hackler's Pride, the clever men at Druids Lodge actually did the same in another handicap in the same two years. They bought Ypsilanti out of a seller, and Fallon developed him into a top-class handicapper. With plans laid in the same careful and silent manner, they took many thousands from the bookmakers when Ypsilanti won the 1903 Kempton "Jubilee” with 8st 1lb The following year the handicapper allotted what he considered a safe burden, 9st 5lb, but the stable knew differently and they again cleaned up a huge sum, when Ypsilanti beat Cerisier, who was carrying only 5st 10lb.


To win two Cambridgeshire’s with one horse, and two Jubilees with another in the same successive years must be unique. But it was not the last time the Confederacy were to double a big handicap. The shrewd Mr. Peard picked up in Ireland a half-brother to the Grand National winner Eremon, a colt by Vitez out of Daisy named Christmas Daisy. As a two-year-old he ran three times in Ireland without winning, and won one of his three races the following season, after an “unplaced” at Liverpool he was sent to Fallon.


As a four-year-old he had five outings before the 1909 Cambridgeshire, winning just once in the Peveril of the Peak Handicap at Derby, carrying 7st. Given only 7st 2lb in the Cambridgeshire he romped home by five lengths. Needless to say the Druids Lodge bank balances swelled again. And they did so the following year when, with 8st 2lb, Christmas Daisy scored in the Cambridgeshire once more.


Season 1904 was a remarkable one for them, for they had started by pulling off the Lincoln Handicap with Uninsured, medium of a big gamble. For a long time the stable could hardly do wrong as countless handicap triumphs came their way. They had a go at the 1906 Derby, but their coup here, with Lally, came unstuck. They got their money back, however, when Lally won the Royal Hunt Cup the following year. If you wish to evaluate the extent of the confederacy’s cat and mouse games with the bookmakers just try working out how a horse gets beaten in a minor apprentice race at Lingfield and is subsequently gambled on to win the Epsom Derby, and goes on the following season to win the Royal Hunt Cup and the Eclipse Stakes! A Derby did come the way of the stable when Cunliffe's horse Aboyeur was given the race on the disqualification of Craganour in 1913. The 1914-18 war broke up the Confederacy, and ended the bookmakers' nightmare.


There was actually a book written about Druids Lodge… “The Druid's Lodge Confederacy - The Gamblers Who Made Racing Pay” by Paul Mathieu. From which the following is a good summary to gain a further insight into the members of the Confederacy.

“The Confederacy was an eclectic bunch. It was headed by Percy Cunliffe, an Old Etonian gold speculator who weighed in at more than twenty stones and 'was not a man much given to smiling'. The man responsible for 'planking' the money down was Wilfred Bagwell Purefoy. Called 'Pure' by his friends, he collected rare orchids, invested heavily in music hall, bred racehorses and was a director of the Autostrop Safety Razor Company, a competitor of Gillette. The funds were fronted by Captain Frank Forester, a dedicated huntsman who was 'a rather terrifying man in the early stages of a run'. And Edward Wigan, a small, extremely uncommunicative man, with a fondness for milk puddings, who pronounced the word coup as 'cowp'. Another Old Etonian, he was criticised by one of his masters for 'only paying enough attention to turn what I've said into a Spoonerism'. The quintet was made up by the Irish vet Holmer Peard, who bought Sceptre and The Tetrarch and oversaw the trials that the Confederacy ran at their stables at Salisbury Plain.


The planning behind Hackler's Pride's initial campaign was meticulous. After one early impressive run at Hurst Park she was, writes Mathieu, 'run neither openly nor very honestly'. To confuse the bookmakers further, the Confederacy indulged in a pea-and-thimble game by entering three other horses in the Cambridgeshire. This was so successful that when the London clubs started offering odds, Hackler's Pride was available at 25-1. To say Pure took advantage is an understatement. Employing contacts as various as a Birmingham New Street station-master, a dentist in Woking and a priest, they piled the money down. She started at 9-2 favourite. The race was a formality. 'Almost from the fall of the flag it was a one-horse race. The judge gave it as three lengths. It might have been 33,' was the verdict in the Sporting Luck.


The next year they repeated the dose. Hackler's Pride ran unconvincingly, they played the pea-and-thimble game and then backed Pride down from 100-7 to 7-2 joint favourite. This time it was a closer run thing as the horse won by a neck. Before the race, a stable lad had approached Cunliffe to tell him he had dreamed that Hackler's Pride had won. Cunliffe, unsurprised, replied: 'Indeed. What were second and third?'”


Some strange ups and downs are produced on the Turf… How many thousands of pounds the trainer Jack Fallon himself made is not known, but he must have been a very rich man at the height of his success. It is said that on the first victory alone of Hackler's Pride he cleared £30,000... As a matter of interest £30,000 as a sum of money in the year 1903 calculates to a value in today’s money as an incredible £2.9million. Yet when he died in a London hospital in 1936 he was penniless, and had fallen so far that a short time before his death a fund had been organised on his behalf.


Leaving the confederacy aside it wouldn’t be hard to write a book about Bernard Dillon alone, a quite brilliant jockey whose career was finished by the age of 25 with the withdrawal of his Jockey’s licence. Dillon had a tempestuous relationship with Marie Lloyd a well known music hall singer 18 years his senior. He was born in Tralee, Ireland and came over to ride for the Druid's Lodge stable of Jack Fallon at the age of 14. His elder brother Joe was already apprenticed at the stables. It obviously suited the Confederates to employ unknowns such as the Dillon’s, rather than established jockeys whose form was already recognised. Bernard's first coup for them was with Ypsilanti in the Kempton Park Jubilee Handicap which netted the confederates today’s equivalent of many millions of pounds. The following year, his win of the Cambridgeshire on Hackler's Pride was another great success for them. After leaving Druid's Lodge, Dillon had a few years at the top of his profession, during which he won the 1000 Guineas twice and the Derby, and rode Pretty Polly to her last four victories. His Classic wins came for outside stables and one year after his Derby success he hung up his boots, having been warned off by the Jockey Club for betting. Dillon was the third husband of the music hall performer Marie Lloyd, who could match her husband's ability to spend money; when she died in 1922 the couple were living in a house provided by her sisters. Dillon died in 1941 at the age of 54, having become a night porter at South Africa House in Trafalgar Square.


In the early part of the 20th century Druids Lodge was famous for successful betting coups with Purefoy, Forrester, Cunliffe, Peard, and Wigan employing Jack Fallon to merely execute the owner's instructions. In 1934 James Voase Rank of the flour milling company known in more recent times as "Rank Hovis McDougall" who was the brother of Joseph Arthur Rank the film magnate purchased the land and stables and installed Noel Cannon as his private trainer. And what of Druids Lodge today? It's no longer a racing stable but now a Polo Club.

Thursday 15 December 2011

More from the Directory of the Turf 1973


Some more scans of pages from the Jockeys section of the Directory of the Turf 1973... Some Flat and National Hunt Jockeys who were licensed at that time. *Indicates an Amateur rider and the summaries include the following Jockeys... 



Page 302 – Macer Gifford, Paul Gleed, Jeremy Glover, John Gorton, Robin Gray, Mickey Greening, Michael Greeves, Robin Griffin, Leonard Griffiths, and D. M. Grissell.


Page 303 – Joe Guest, Steve Hadland, Johnny Haine, Johnny Haldane, Chris Harrhy, John Harty, Phil Harvey, Freddie Head, Mark Hetherton, Bunny Hicks, and Eddie Hide.



Page 304 – Eddie Hide (Cont.), John Higgins, Roger Hoad, Ryan Hodges, Steve Holland, Tim Holland-Martin, Billy Howlett, Duncan Hughes, and Ron Hutchinson.



Page 305 – Ron Hutchinson (Cont.), Ron Hyett, Brian Jago, John James, Michael James, James Paull, David Jelf, John Jenkins, Bill Jesse, Steve Jobar, and Ernie Johnson.


Wednesday 14 December 2011

Directory of the Turf - 1973

Some scans of four pages from the Jockeys section of the Directory of the Turf 1973... This comprises of some Flat and National Hunt Jockeys who were licensed at that time. * Indicates an Amateur rider and the summaries include the following Jockeys... 


* Indicates Amateur rider.
Page 298 - Paul Cook, John Corr, Alan Cousins, Des Cullen, John Curant, Gerald Dartnall, B. W. Davies, B. R. Davies, Kevin Davies, R. A. Davies, R. F. Davies.



Page 299 – T. G. Davies, Richard Dennard, Malcolm Gerrard De Ste. Croix, Michael Dickinson, David Dineley, George Duffield, Peter Duggins, Frankie Durr, Chris Dwyer, and David East.



Page 300 – David East (cont.), Clive Eccleston, Pat Eddery, Robert Edmondson, Gary Edmunds, Eric Eldin, Brian Ellison, Peter Ennis, John Enright,  David Evans, and Paul Evans.



Page 301 – Richard Evans, *David Evatt, *John Farrant, Jock Ferguson, *Timothy Finch, Leon Flavien, Brian Fletcher, Brian Forsey, *C. W. Foulkes, Jim Fox, John Francome, and Charlie Gaston.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Red is the Colour - 1968 Thirty One Reds

In the 1968 season thirty one horses with the name starting with the word Red ran on the flat. Twenty of them achieved a Timeform rating with the list being topped by Peter Walwyn's Red Rose Prince rated at 114. Red Rum was a respectable 7th highest rated at 88 whilst eleven of the thirty one failed to achive any rating


RED ROSE PRINCE (P. T. Walwyn) – 114
RED PIXIE (M. H. Easterby) – 97
RED SUNSET 111 (P. M. Nelson) – 95
RED TOD (C. C. Crossley) – 93
RED SWAN (T.W. Robson) – 91
RED SALLY (H. P. Rohan) – 90
RED RUM (T. Molony) – 88
RED DESIRE (E. Weymes) – 85
RED PAUL (E. J. Carr) – 82
RED PERCH (J. D. Calvert) – 80
RED WON (A. Balding) – 80
REDON (F. L. Armstrong) – 78
RED FORTUNE (R. V. Smyth) – 77
RED HOT PIRATE (P. F. I. Cole) – 70
REDLANDS (E. D. O'Keeffe) – 69
RED CHILLIE (F. L. Armstrong) – 68
RED ABBOT (J. A. A. Stevens) – 66
RED JET (F. Carr) – 64
RED SALOON (L. A. Hall) – 62
RED GYPSY (G. R. Smyth) – 60
REDEX (G. H. Hunter) – Unrated
RED GUARD (Miss S. E. Hall) – Unrated
RED HOW (M. A. Vasey) – Unrated
RED JACK (P. M. Nelson) – Unrated
RED PLANCHADO (A. Brewster – Unrated
RED ROAD (L. H. Shedden) – Unrated
RED SAL (J. Barclay) – Unrated
RED SATIN (A.W. Goodwill) – Unrated
RED SOLITAIRE (W.R. Hern) – Unrated
RED WALK (Miss N. E. Wilmott) – Unrated
RED WOLF (M. McCourt) – Unrated


Red Abbot to Red Jack


Red Jet to Red Rum


Red Sal to Red Swan


Red Tod to Red Won


Sunday 11 December 2011

Some photos and summaries from the Timeform book "Racehorses of 1968"



Ron Smyth's Persian Whistle (Geoff Lewis) wins the Joe Coral (Kent) Cup at Folkestone from Hilldyke Flower (Tommy Carter), Polistina (Lester Piggott), and Trindle Down (Pat Reavey).


Bill Elsey's Alignment (Ernie Johnson) wins the Johnnie Walker Ebor H'cap by a neck from the blinkered Tiber (Lester Piggott), with Quartette (Bill Williamson) in third place, and Marcus Brutus (George Cadwaladr) fourth.




Castle Yard (Bill Williamson) comes home clear of Midnight Marauder (Lester Piggott) and Red Swan (Frankie Durr) on the rails in the Falmouth Handicap at York.




The shock of the season in a “no betting returned” race - Dave Hanley’s unrated maiden two year old King Bob (Sandy Barclay) on the rails, short heads the 119 rated five year old seasoned sprinter St. Alphage (Joe Mercer) in the Star and Garter Stakes at Ascot.



Fulke Johnson Houghton’s Dieudonne (Lester Piggott) on the right, just holds on for a short head win over Rebel Prince (Eddie Hide) in the Acomb Stakes at York. Anguilla (Greville Starkey) and Heaven Sent (Joe Mercer) were one and a half lengths and two lengths back in third and fourth respectively.




Doug Smith’s Owen Anthony in the centre ridden by Tommy Reidy claiming a full 7lbs apprentices allowance, is seen here getting up in the last stride to beat Kamundu (George Cadwaladr) by a head with on the left Come On Grey (George Duffield claiming 5lbs) a further neck back in third place in the Matthew Peacock Stakes at Haydock.



Gordon Smyth’s Straight Master (Bill Williamson) on the rails, gains victory by a head over Petros (Lester Piggott) in the William Hill Gold Cup at Redcar.



Brighton racecourse is shrouded in mist as Bernard Van Cutsem’s brilliant filly Park Top (Geoff Lewis) comfortably humps 9stone 10lb to a one and half lengths victory over Santaway (John Hayward claiming 5lbs allowance)  with Lexicon (David Maitland) six lengths back in third place.