A Jockey for Position

Lester Piggott and Vincent O'Brien have finally decided to go their separate ways. It is the way of racing that jockey/trainer partnerships, not unlike manager/club relationships in soccer, tend to flourish when the team is winning and tend to break up when the partnership hits a losing spell. So then what is so special about this particular break-up?

For the racing enthusiast, the shock of this break-up stems not so much from the fact that in their fourteen year long association O'Brien and Piggott won everything that mattered (Four English Derbies, two Arc de Triomphes, two King Georges, two Eclipses, one Irish Derby and eleven other English and Irish classics), but from the feeling that this was always the perfect partnership. O'Brien linked with Piggott simply meant the best with the best.

Prior to coming together the two had had prodigious success. As a National Hunt trainer in the forties and fifties, O'Brien had won three Grand Nationals, three Gold Cups and everything else of importance before turning his skills to flat racing. On the flat O'Brien hit the jackpot almost immediately when he turned out Ballymoss to win the Eclipse, the King George and the Arc in the 1958 season. Before the combination won their first classic, with Valoris in the 1966 Epsom Oaks, Lester had already won three Epsom Derbies, six other English and Irish classics and four English jockey championships. When the two finally came together on a regular basis in the seventies, they had long since forgotten more about horse racing than most people will ever know.

Why then, after a decade in which they have dominated Irish, English and French racing, has the split now come? The main reason is simple - Lester is now approaching his 45th birthday and cannot be expected to go on riding for more than another two or three seasons. The man who replaces Lester with the O'Brien stable, Pat Eddery, can however, at the age of 28, be expected to have another 20 years in the saddle. The O'Brien stable was always going to have to look for a new jockey sometime soon and it seems that O'Brien, and his main owner/partner Robert Sangster, decided to go for their man sooner rather than later.

The role that Robert Sangster has played in all this has been far from small. Since the mid-seventies, Sangster has been the major owner at the O'Brien stable. Although he does not own the horses completely, he is often the major shareholder in a syndicate of three, four or five people who own the horse. O'Brien himself is unusual as a public trainer in that he owns a part of every horse in the stable. In a real sense, O'Brien, influenced by the business sense of millionaire and Vernons Pools director Sangster, controls his own stable. The racing world is by now familiar with the radical approach that the partnership has taken to the traditional ways of racing. They spend big on yearlings (£3-£4 million in a summer is not unusual) in an attempt (usually successful) to find one crack horse who could be worth anything up to £7 or £8 million.

O'Brien's emphasis on the details of racehorse training is legendary - when his horses go to the races, for example, the stable take with them not only fodder but also bedding. To minimize. the effect of wearying travel, O'Brien recently organised his own airstrip and his own two-horse air transporter so that the horses can walk out of their stable door and on to the plane.

Given the size and thoroughness of the stable's operations, it is not surprising then that huge importance was attached to securing the services of a top jockey. It is also totally in keeping with their business-like outlook on racing that they made Pat Eddery an offer which erased any qualms of loyalty he may have been feeling to his old employer, Peter Walwyn.

That however is not the whole story. The racecourses have been rife this summer with rumours of a disagreement between Lester and Sangster. It seems that the stable was less than satisfied with Lester's riding of Gonzales in the French Derby at Chantilly. It appears that Lester lay a bit off the pace and allowed the frontrunning Policeman (the winner) to get away on him. The fact that Sangster stood to win a six figure sum in a combination bet on Gonzales, as much as the horse's final placing of fifth, probably explains why this reverse went down so badly.

Sangster and O'Brien were also annoyed with Lester when he opted out of his contract ride on Gregorian in the King George at Ascot. Lester wanted to ride Mrs. Penny and in the end his judgement proved accurate as ever, for Gregorian finished third and Mrs. Penny finished second. Of course the fact that this summer has been a (by their own standards) highly unsuccessful one, cannot have helped matters. Top two year olds of last season like Monteverdi and Thousandfold have been dismal failures. Monteverdi had been the winter favourite for the 2,000 Guineas and Epsom Derby, but failed to win a race in four attempts in 1980.

Lester's successor, Pat Eddery, has long since been regarded as being as good as any jockey. His coolness, intelligence and tactical aptitude will have recommended him to O'Brien and Sangster. By comparison to Lester, he has one advantage - he talks better! Eddery's ability to quickly and concisely assess a horse will be well received. It is not that Lester cannot evaluate a horse; far from it, the problem is that on occasion Lester can be less than garrulous. After Nijinsky had won the 1970 2,000 Guineas, eager owner Charles Englehard rushed over to Lester in the unsaddling enclosure to hear the great man's thoughts. "Not bad" was all the information volunteered by Lester.

In the business of planning a horse's running and placing him in his races, the assistance of a good judge like Eddery, both on the racetrack and on the training gallops, could be vital. The fewer times a horse is misplaced, the fewer races he loses and the better his record looks for stud purposes. Much of the O'Brien stable planning aims to do just that - produce potential top class stallions.

One thing remains, however, clear about the jockey changes. Pat Eddery may be a lot younger and a better talker, but nobody can seriously suggest that he is any better a jockey than Lester. The point is that, despite what the punting public might think, there is no difference at this level of jockeyship. Joe Mercer, Willie Carson, Greville Starkey, Pat Eddery, Lester Piggott are all total craftsmen and will all win if they are on the best horse at least 99 per cent of the time. Of course every now and again a jockey makes a mistake, or does something to catch his opponents unaware. But they all make mistakes and when it comes to inspiration, there has never been anyone like Lester.

However, myths abound. It is often said of Eddery, that he is the jockey who makes the least mistakes. After Eddery had started off the Sangster association by winning the 1980 Arc on the French-trained Detroit, Sangster was quoted as saying that Eddery "is a jockey who is always in the right place at the right time". Really? Two weeks previously Detroit had lost the important Prix Vermeille over the same Longchamps course and distance when ridden by Eddery. Just when Eddery wanted to pull out from behind the leader to come and win his race, he found that John Matthias on Mrs. Penny had beaten him to the gap and had him boxed in. By the time Eddery got clear, his chance had gone and he finished a close third to Mrs. Penny. Was Eddery "in the right place at the right time" that afternoon? In racing, memories can be short. No blame to Eddery for a mistake, but let no one suggest that he makes any less than anyone else.

Another Eddery myth is that in that same Arc he rode Detroit in his "typical quiet style of hands and heels riding". In fact Eddery hit Detroit eighteen times in the last two furlongs of the Longchamps classic. Indeed, Eddery's ride of Detroit has been justly acclaimed. But on a close examination of the race, it is clear that the luck went his way.

After the field had gone three furlongs, Eddery was on the rails in fourth last place in a field of twenty. According to all Longchamps experience, it is unwise to lie that far off the pace in an Arc, since the hazards of making up one's ground in a huge field are immense. With six furlongs to go, coming down the hill into the straight, he moved to about three off the rails and made steady progress until the straight itself. At this stage there were still ten horses in front of him, none of whom were stopping. Eddery now began to ride Detroit in earnest and when he found his way blocked was able to change course and pull out from the rails and move into the centre of the track unimpeded. It is a tribute to his immense skill that this move came off, but for even as good a jockey as Eddery it could have gone wrong. Just one bump, one horse in the way, one tiring leader rolling in front of him could have stopped him long enough to lose the half length by which Detroit eventually won. (Indeed the German horse, Nebos and the French horse, Argument suffered just such interference as they made up ground from behind.)

In the end Eddery was justifiably acclaimed, since he won. But in purest terms, as the Arc goes, the ride which Carson gave to Ela Mama Mou or which Freddie Head gave to Three Troikas relied much less on the luck of a good run. Eddery's fierce finish, with the whip at first in his right hand and then in his left, illustrates one aspect of his style. More than any other of the elite flat-race jockeys, with the exception of Lester, Eddery can ride a whip finish. It is only further indication of the fact that if O'Brien and Sangster had wanted to replace Lester Piggott with a jockey whose style is similar and whose talent is comparable, then there was only one choice Pat Eddery.

An intriguing afterthought to the jockey changes chez O'Brien is that there may be more to come. O'Brien's stable jockey in Ireland (Eddery is first jockey for the big international races) Tommy Murphy is 44 years of age and currently injured. Could be that he too will soon be out of a job!