Читать книгу Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings - Nick Robinson - Страница 9

Robert Sangster learned, before the 1961 racing season even opened, what it was like to be hit hard by the Jockey Club handicapper. For the Liverpool Spring Cup, Chalk Stream was put up nine pounds in the weights. In addition, on the day of the race, he behaved very mulishly at the start, finally condescended to run, and trailed in ninth of thirteen. Fortunately Eric Cousins, liking neither the weights nor Chalk Stream’s general attitude, had told Robert on no account to have a bet. The weight was a problem, but the real trouble was in Chalk Stream’s mind. In Cousins’s opinion he may have been one of those horses which carry for a long time bad memories of a race. They remember the whip and the aching that all athletes experience in the final stages of a hard struggle. Chalk Stream had had a tough one at Liverpool in November and he did not really want to line up at the start ever again.

But he had an easy time in the Spring Cup – the jockey did not drive him out when defeat was inevitable – and Eric again tested him in mid April, and he finished second at Wolverhampton coming with a strong, steady run from two furlongs out. Again it was a not hard race, nothing like the great battle he had fought in November, coming from far back to victory when the money was down. Eric Cousins decided the time was right to bring Chalk Stream to a fever pitch of fitness and send him out to try and win the Great Jubilee Handicap worth nearly £3000 (probably £30,000 in today’s currency) on the fast, flat course of Kempton Park to the south-west of London.

Naturally Robert and his team, who would be making the two-hundred-mile journey south for the race, wanted to know two things: was he going to run well, and did they have a bet. For once Eric Cousins was cautious. He told Robert very carefully, ‘In a handicap like this he cannot afford to throw it away at the start. If he is difficult and gives them an eight- or ten-length lead before they start, he will not win. But we are in with only seven stone five, and if he runs like he did at Liverpool he might just make it.’

The situation was not only forked, it was double-edged. To bet or not to bet? Chalk Stream’s two defeats in 1961 had got four pounds off his back, his apprentice jockey would claim three more. But this race would sway with the weights. Chalk Stream must carry three more pounds than he did when he last won. That three extra represented one and a half lengths – the distance that separated the first four in last year’s Lincoln. Could Chalk Stream deliver again? Would he break fast at the start? Would Robert dare to go in with another £100 bet? The conundrum preoccupied Robert almost to the exclusion of all else. He loved the academic aspect of this sport, measuring risk against hard cash. Trying to make a sound decision without giving away £100 to Major Ronnie Upex, the rails layer for the big bookmakers Heathorns with whom Robert had a fluctuating credit account.

Robert did not just like the world of racing, he was rapidly becoming addicted to it. He and Eric Cousins would sit for hours over at the Tarporley stables discussing their problems over a few glasses of champagne. Finally, one evening, Eric came up with a master plan, based on the fact that Robert would not put the money down until they knew the horse was racing with the rest of them. It would take split-second timing, but it was possible, of that Eric had no doubt.

On the day of the race, the scrum of the Birkenhead Park second team was sorely depleted, as its tight-head prop forward headed for the owners’ stand at Kempton Park. Two other members of the pack were also going to be at Kempton and there was an atmosphere of tense excitement as Robert and Christine flew down the old A34 road towards Oxford in that 100mph Mercedes sports car of his. Nick Robinson was actually going the other way, speeding one hundred miles cross-country to Worcester to join his grandfather who had a runner there. But the Great Jubilee would be on national radio and Nick was already tuned in. He had already taken his chance and placed a credit bet of £25 on Chalk Stream to win at starting price. It was a quieter, less restricted time in England – only about one-fifth of the cars of today were being driven. There were no speed limits on fast country roads, the breathalyzer had not been invented, and it was indeed a privileged time for young men like Robert Sangster and Nick Robinson.

The horses came into the Kempton paddock and Robert and Christine watched Chalk Stream walk round. Eric thought he looked a bit on his toes, a bit restless. The trainer spoke tersely to his young jockey, Brian Lee, instructing him not to leave things too late, to set off for home two furlongs out with a steady run, and then to drive him to the line, if necessary under the whip.

The runners left to go down to the start and Christine and Eric headed to a high point in the grandstand while Robert walked down the sloping lawn towards the bookmakers. He located Heathorns’ pitch and strolled up to look at the prices. Chalk Stream was fluctuating between 7–1 and 9–1, drifting in the market, if anything. There was a big crowd and he stood unnoticed, as the throng hustled and bustled to place their bets.

‘They’re at the post!’ called the racecourse announcer. And within a couple of minutes Eric Cousins had his binoculars trained on the green and blue colours of Chalk Stream and Brian Lee far out across the course. Robert edged nearer to Heathorns, keeping his back to Major Ronnie Upex and his eyes on the grandstand, from which Eric was watching from the pre-planned spot.

The starter called the horses in. Chalk Stream moved up with the rest of them. Robert edged back further. ‘They’re under starter’s orders!’ – Chalk Stream was standing still – ‘And they’re off! Chalk Stream suddenly rushed forward, racing away with the leaders. Eric Cousins’s hat flew from his head and he held it aloft for his young owner to see. Robert whipped round and shouted, ‘£100 to win Chalk Stream, please, Major. I’ll take the 8–1.’

‘Eight hundred pounds to one, down to Mr Sangster,’ said Major Upex to his clerk, and even as he spoke the field was already through the first furlong galloping fast down the back straight with a little over a mile to run. It was a very hot race. The favourite was Nerograph, who had already won the prestigious City and Suburban Handicap this season, and he was carrying only two pounds more than Chalk Stream. The great Australian jockey Scobie Breasley was on Thames Trader who would go on to win the Bessborough Stakes at Royal Ascot, and then there was Alec Head’s horse, Sallymount, who had come over from France and carried top weight, twenty-eight pounds more than Chalk Stream. All the great English jockeys were riding: young Lester Piggott, Joe Mercer, the Queen’s jockey Harry Carr, Bill Rickaby and the ultrastylist Jimmy Lindley.

Robert struggled his way to higher ground. Now they had only five furlongs to run and he could see the favourite Nerograph was out in front with Optimistic on his inside, these two tracked by Powder Rock and Midsummer Night. Chalk Stream was racing about eighth of the sixteen. They swung for home with a little more than two furlongs to run. The grandstand erupted with a deafening roar as the French horse Sallymount went for home first, coming to challenge Nerograph as they raced towards the furlong pole. The commentator called out: ‘It’s Sallymount for France on the outside, Nerograph on the inside, Thames Trader improving.’

Then he added the words which sent a dagger-like shiver down Robert’s spine: ‘Chalk Stream coming with a run along the rails’ And the crowd was on its feet to a man, shouting with excitement as Chalk Stream came to challenge Sallymount in the lead. Now Neville Sellwood went for his whip as he fought to hold the Sangster horse at bay. Chalk Stream was at his boot straps, and Sallymount fought with every ounce of strength he had, carrying his huge weight with immense courage. The ground was running out for both of them, and the post loomed in front. The two horses were locked together with fifty yards to run, and again Lee went to the whip. Chalk Stream gave it his all, running on with the utmost gallantry, and on the line he had it. By only a head, but he had it. Robert Sangster’s face was a photographer’s study in pure joy.

The rest of the day passed in a kind of glorious glow which turned to a bit of a blur, courtesy of Rheims finest. Robert had had a truly sensational start to his career as a racehorse owner, or at least Christine had. But for Robert the entire horse-racing scene represented something far deeper. He knew at Kempton Park on that sunlit spring afternoon in 1961 that he was hopelessly in love with the sport, that he would never stray far from the thunder of the hooves across the turf – win, lose or draw. He loved the sight of the horses, their beauty, and their courage. He loved the planning, the scheming, the second guessing the bookies and the handicappers. And today’s highly profitable endeavour against Major Upex? Well, Robert went for that in a major way. The sheer mischief of it appealed to him hugely. As well it might. Because mischief is a word which is very fitting to Robert Sangster. He has a mischievous face and a mischievous turn of mind, and he laughed about it for years afterwards.

Eric Cousins, by the way, wondered whether Chalk Stream would ever volunteer to run like that again. It had been another very tough race and the gelding had shown many signs of worry in his career so far. Privately, Eric thought that the horse had probably had enough of flat racing and that he would decline to enter for another battle such as the one he had just fought, and so bravely won. And Eric was right. Chalk Stream never won again. Chalk Stream actually never finished in the first three again. Very broadly, Chalk Stream had made an announcement, which, expressed in human terms, was simple: ‘Forget that. I have no intention of ever trying that hard again. I’m strictly here for the exercise.’ All through that season Eric Cousins tried to make him cast that ordeal from his mind. They ran him five times and they traipsed all over the north of England watching him. But he would not try again. The year which had begun with such sparkling promise, rather petered out for Robert.

In his very first season, Robert received a thorough grounding in the joys and agonies of racehorse ownership. He really was put through the mill, with enormous highs, culminating in the most dreadful anti-climax. He learned a million lessons about the wily ways of the thoroughbred racehorse. And he learned one lesson which would last him for all of his life: accept the greatest victory as if you are used to it, and accept the most awful defeat as if it does not matter. For Robert, the season ended officially on II November in the traditional English big-race finale, the Manchester November Handicap. Twenty-nine runners took part. Chalk Stream beat three. But now, as Robert and Christine drove home to the Wirral, there was no air of despondency. Robert’s eyes were on the future. He wanted more racehorses. Maybe quite of lot of them. He and Eric Cousins were not finished yet. Not by a long way.

In fact Eric was already regarded as a ‘hot’ trainer. Earlier that season he had won the 1961 Lincolnshire Handicap with a lightly weighted runner called Johns Court from a massive field of thirty-seven horses. Lee rode him and the horse won by three lengths at 25–1. Johns Court was sensationally fit that day, but he never won again all season. Not that this troubled Eric much. He also won the 1962 Lincolnshire with a different horse, Hill Royal, which also carried about seven and a half stone in a field of forty. Robert’s victory at Kempton was the start of a quite remarkable rampage in this race by Eric Cousins. He was to win it for the next three years in succession. Everybody was talking about Eric Cousins. Bookmakers were griping and moaning, handicappers were furious with him, and the Stewards of the Jockey Club were beginning to get very beady. How the devil could this ex-fighter pilot keep on producing horses so superbly fit on the day, never with as much as one pound too much on the handicap, invariably at a whacking great price?

Robert, of course, was by now right in the thick of it. He had prised loose some family cash and now had half a dozen horses in training – all bought by Eric at the sales, all judged by him to be capable of ‘improvement’. And as he improved them the Stewards became crosser. They usually have a short unwritten ‘hit list’ of trainers they believe are being devious in the extreme, losing races when it suits them, and then flying to victory with light weights and big bets. To suggest Eric Cousins was on this ‘hit list’ of trainers who might be called in to face the Disciplinary Committee would be childish in the extreme. He was at the top of it. And everyone knew the Stewards were watching his every move.

The phrase ‘Cousins and Sangster’ was being heard in high places, as the pair of them toured the North Country and Scottish tracks having what Robert recalls as ‘some of the most wonderful days of my life’. The racing was very much ‘bush league’ but to the young heir to Vernons Pools those races might have been the Derby. Every one of them gave him a charge of adrenalin. He never gave a thought to the beckoning glory of great classic races, with hugely expensive horses and massive prizes. For him, every race in which he had a runner was the Derby, especially when Eric told them to ‘get on’. Robert just loved the local courses, and he loved to drive up to Scotland with his golf clubs, playing nine holes in the long summer evenings after the races, then dining sumptuously with his close friends, preparing to face the enemy (the bookmakers) once more on the morrow.

In those years of the 60s, he and Eric had some mighty ‘touches’. They also had some diabolical strokes of ill-fortune which were just another part of the game, but which the Stewards neither knew nor cared about. Goodwood Racecourse, set high in the glorious Sussex Downs with a long southerly view to Chichester Cathedral and the Isle of Wight, was the scene of perhaps their most spectacular catastrophe. It occurred in 1963. Nick Robinson, by now almost a ‘blood brother’ to Robert, was heavily involved. In fact Nick’s grandfather, the redoubtable Sir Foster, former captain and wicket-keeper for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, fly fisherman and occasional punter, could be said to have been the instigator of the entire disaster. The race was the 120-year-old Stewards Cup, a six-furlong sprint handicap which was traditionally run on the opening day of Goodwood’s July Meeting. It is always an enormous betting race, a regular target for ‘hot’ trainers with lightly weighted horses. It provides also one of the most spectacular sights in all of English racing as a big Stewards Cup field thunders to the top of the hill, the silks stark against the horizon, and then hurtles line abreast down the steep dip towards the grandstand.

Old Sir Foster had actually lost this race three years in a row, finishing second every time with a very fast horse called Deer Leap. The distances were, hideously, a neck and two short heads. Each time Nick and Robert, not to mention Sir Foster, had had a good bet. Each time they lost – in 1961 to the great Skymaster. The Stewards Cup was not much short of a bug-bear to all of them. Now, as the 1963 season headed towards midsummer, Eric Cousins imparted the nerve-jangling news that Robert’s horse Highroy was just about fast enough to avenge Sir Foster. In fact the horse’s entire preparation would be for the Stewards Cup, and he, Eric, believed he would win it. This possessed enormous appeal to the Robin Hood of Vernons. He, Robert, now had the means to win them back all of their lost money. For weeks before the race, they plunged the cash onto Highroy, as if defeat was out of the question.

However, when the overnight declarations came up, there was bad news. The venerable Newmarket trainer Jack Jarvis had unexpectedly decided to run Lord Rosebery’s sprinter Creole, and naturally summoned his stylish stable jockey Peter Robinson to ride – the same Peter Robinson Eric had booked for Highroy. This was a serious blow. Eric hustled around and booked Paul Tulk for Highroy, a capable jockey but not his first choice. The race was, as usual, run at a ferocious pace and on the line Creole beat Highroy a short head. Robert and Nick could not believe their luck. Eric was very fed up too. But he had a plan. Three days later on the Friday there was another Goodwood sprint, the Chichester Stakes, and in his view Highroy would have recovered sufficiently to run and win. ‘The competition is not so hot,’ he said. ‘And Jarvis does not have a runner. Peter Robinson will ride for us.’

Once more Robert and Nick plunged into the bookmakers, and once more they stood, gripped by nerves, high in the County Stand, their fingers white-knuckled on their binoculars. This was getting expensive. And once more Highroy got beat in a photo-finish, by a short head.

‘Christ!’ said Robert. ‘Can you believe that could happen? Can you believe that?’

‘Not easily,’ said Nick. ‘By the way, did you see who rode the winner?’

‘If you say Paul Tulk I’ll probably commit suicide.’

‘Don’t do it, Robert,’ said Nick, shaking his head gravely. ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’

This was not the only time in 1963 when Robert felt the need for a drink. It was an awful season for him. Not one of his horses won anywhere. But this seemed only to spur him on to greater ambitions, to own more horses, to go racing more often, and to study formlines and breeding lines even more assiduously.

Curiously it had been a powerful owner-breeder and member of the Jockey Club who had inspired him to lose so much money on those Goodwood sprints. And now it would be the same senior establishment figure who would get it all back for him and more. Sir Foster Robinson had a two-year-old filly who had not yet won a race. She was bright chestnut in colour and rather lean and athletic in conformation. Her name was Homeward Bound. It was her ancestry which intrigued Robert: she was a half-sister to Chalk Stream, his very first horse, both of them being out of Sir Foster’s mare Sabie River. When Nick imparted the news that his grandfather’s trainer, John Oxley, thought she would win the Oaks, England’s premier mile-and-a-half classic for fillies, run at Epsom three days after the Derby in June, Robert could scarcely locate a bookmaker fast enough.

On the day of the race the bookmakers were still offering 100–7 against Homeward Bound winning the Oaks. They who handled the accounts of N. J. F. Robinson and R. Sangster lived, however, to rue their careless and uncharacteristic generosity. On a wet afternoon on Epsom Downs, Homeward Bound came with a tremendous run down the middle to win the 1964 Oaks by two lengths from Windmill Girl (the future dam of Arthur Budgett’s two Derby winners). It was the finest moment in all of his years of racing for Sir Foster Robinson, now aged eighty-four. It was not half bad for his grandson and his sidekick either.

The victory of Homeward Bound did not spur Robert Sangster on towards the upper reaches of thoroughbred racing – with thoughts of perhaps one day owning an Oaks winner of his own, or perhaps even a Derby winner, or any other classic winner. But rather it seemed to concentrate his mind on the intricacies of breeding racehorses, as indeed the subject has captured men of similar thoughtful and ambitious disposition down the years. He had loved the electric atmosphere of the big summer occasion on Epsom Downs, but what really fascinated him was the fact that Homeward Bound was from the same mare as Chalk Stream. He worked out that the basic shape and conformation of the two horses was from the dam. He also considered that their similar will-to-win must spring from the same genes. But Homeward Bound’s superior class, and her ability to run over a longer distance, and to keep running on strongly, uphill to the finish, must surely have come from her sire, the great staying horse and champion stallion, Alycidon. Robert immersed himself in books about the subject, poring over long-forgotten pedigrees, tracing bloodlines to famous stallions, trying to formulate patterns of breeding, which stallion lines worked best with which female lines.

But these were his evening preoccupations. His day-to-day dramas on the racecourse were still conducted around the northern tracks, and the one he loved most of all was the modest Scottish course which sits on the south Ayrshire coast on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. The two big meetings at Ayr Racecourse, in June and the Western Meeting in September, represented for Robert something approximately between Christmas and Mardi Gras. Or at least he was apt to turn the occasions into those qualities of celebration. He would arrive on the evening before the racing began, by now sweeping up the drive to the Turnberry Hotel in a new Rolls Royce, and within the hour he would report to one of the greatest golf links in the world. Turnberry, a 7000-yard championship test, spreads along the shoreline, guarded by a magnificent lighthouse. In terms of difficulty it compares very favourably with Robert’s home links of Hoylake, and like Royal Liverpool has been the scene of a titanic and historic battle for the British Open – in 1977 Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus burst ten strokes clear of the field before Watson’s 65 beat Jack’s last-round 66. Its views out towards the Irish Sea are as romantic as those from the Wirral. In the near distance you can see the granite dome of the island of Ailsa Craig, and beyond that the Mull of Kintyre. On very clear days, you can see the distant shores of County Antrim in the north-east of Ireland. With the possible exception of the winner’s enclosure at the nearby racecourse, Robert’s favourite place on all of this earth may very well be the ninth hole at Turnberry, the tee of which sits on a rocky pinnacle out to sea.

Nick Robinson recalls one glorious summer evening here, just as the sun was turning the far reaches of the ocean to the colour of spent fire as it sunk behind the waves. Robert was about to hit when someone carelessly asked him, in the middle of his backswing, ‘Does that lighthouse work?’

‘Only when it’s dark,’ replied Robert breezily as he struck a long drive out over the in-running tide and over the cliffs towards the fairway, and the green, set hard by the great nautical light.

Only truly diabolical weather ever prevented him playing nine holes after a day at the races. And nothing ever prevented him playing eighteen before he went to the races.

Win, lose or draw, he and his friends – plus of course Eric Cousins – dined sumptuously at the Turnberry Hotel every night, not, incidentally, at his expense, although he would usually insist on standing the party two or three bottles of decent champagne by way of an overture. Sometimes the party was overshadowed by a particularly grim loss to the bookmakers, but not for long. And certainly not on the occasions when his chestnut colt Shy Boy (by Alycidon) – bought for 2300 guineas at the autumn sales – won twice at the Ayr June meeting over a mile and a half. Definitely not when his bay gelding Endorsement – bought for only 1000 guineas from Jack Jarvis – won the Ayrshire Handicap by a neck from Night Star. Words can barely describe the fun and games which broke out after Robert’s lovely chestnut filly Brief Star got up on the line to win the major race of the Western Meeting, the Ayr Gold Cup.

However, no race in Eric Cousins’s relatively short but meteoric career as a trainer ever matched that Gold Cup for such personal tensions and feelings of rivalry inside his own stable. It had all begun back in the days of the old Kardomah lunch club. Robert had introduced two of his friends to Eric. They were David Freeman who ran an upmarket meat canning business (Gold Dish Ox-Tongues), and Leo McParland, whose family owned a major cattle importing business, bringing the beasts in from Ireland presumably in order to help fill the Freeman cans. These two old friends also went in together and bought a couple of racehorses, but one of them was a very useful filly named Ludham, and when she finished third in the Oaks, having finished second in the Cheshire Oaks, Robert felt slightly aggrieved at the sheer quality of their filly – better than any horse he had ever owned. Then Ludham came out and won the Doonside Cup at Ayr and they all thought Robert’s nose was really out of joint, though he said nothing.

But now things were rather different. David Freeman and Leo McParland had another good racehorse, a very fast but moderately bred gelding called Salan. They very much wanted him to run in the Ayr Gold Cup where Robert’s own filly was bidding for glory. In addition everyone knew Robert had a massive wager on the race. He would never say precisely how much but Nick Robinson thought it was a £100 double – Intermezzo to win the St Leger at 7–1 and Brief Star for the Gold Cup at 33–1. When Intermezzo won the St Leger the entire situation became rather serious.

Robert turned up at the Turnberry Hotel, at the usual time, and took a surreptitious glance at the wine list, which was reputed to be the best in Scotland. After the traditional twilight nine holes, he changed and prepared for dinner with four of his closest friends – Nick; Bobby McAlpine, heir to the large northern-based construction company Sir Alfred McAlpine Ltd; Tim Holland, proprietor of the legendary London gaming club, Crockford’s (whose faithful caddy Mullins sat alone at a nearby table); and Tim Kitson, the young Yorkshire politician who was to become Parliamentary Private Secretary to the future Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath. Eric Cousins joined them an hour later. By now the dining room was full of racing’s major personalities, as it always was for this meeting: the champion jockey Lester Piggott, the professional gambler Alec Bird with his guest Phil Bull, the red-bearded publisher of racing’s ‘Bible’ Timeform, leading northern owner Guy Reed, trainers Geoff Wragg, Peter Easterby, Sam Hall and Harry Thompson Jones, and others.

All through dinner Robert kept going on about the presence of Salan in his race. Eric was, naturally, in a very awkward position. He owed loyalty to all of his owners, and Freeman and McParland were insisting on running their horse. Robert kept muttering darkly about the consequences of Salan beating Brief Star. And as Robert kept looking at the form, Eric was clearly looking at the sack from his old friend and principal owner. He tried to explain his position, but Robert continued to grumble. He was still grumbling the following day when the starter sent the field away. And he was beside himself when Salan hit the front coming to the final furlong. But Brief Star was still there, running fiercely in the middle of the pack. Suddenly she made her break, on the outside, and flew over the closing yards, to nail Salan right on the line, winning by a neck.

Robert, fighting back his overpowering joy, turned to Nick and said cheerfully: ‘Well, that wasn’t much trouble, was it?’ And then to Eric, he said, with a smile of absolute calm, ‘Of course, you knew I was only kidding, didn’t you?’

There was another occasion at Ayr a few years later when Eric Cousins advised Robert to have a bet on yet another chestnut filly of his, Solo Stream, in Ayr’s big race of the day, the five-furlong Bass Special sprint. However, before they went to post, Robert had spent half an hour chatting to the great Irish trainer Mick O’Toole, who could be damned if he could see anything beating his horse in the race. Robert changed his mind and backed the Irish horse instead of his own. He watched the race with Nick Robinson and, with a couple of hundred yards to run, Robert cried in exasperation: ‘Damn! We’re beat.’

Nick, who had stuck to his original bet on Robert’s Solo Stream, replied: ‘Yes, very boring for you. But you’ve just bloody well won the race!’

‘Who’s won the race?’

‘You have! Solo Stream, your horse, remember?’ replied his long-time cohort. ‘I suppose we had better get down to the winner’s enclosure to meet Eric.’ And they bolted down the grandstand back stairs, chuckling as they had done for so many years, like two dreadful schoolboys, who had nearly got caught, but not quite.

By the end of the 1960s Eric Cousins had won Robert fifty races, including a few over the jumps, including the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter. He had also won at Newmarket, the headquarters of English racing. This was with his grey colt Hang On in a contest named the Crawfurd Handicap, about three weeks before the Jockey Club had blackballed Christopher Soames, just down the road at The Rooms. At precisely that time, Robert had become so engrossed with the challenge of actually breeding his own racehorses that he bought himself a stud farm in Cheshire, or at least he bought himself a rather decrepit two-hundred-acre farm in Cheshire with a view to turning it into a stud farm. It was called Swettenham Hall and it was situated in the most lonely part of the countryside to the north of Congleton. Basically, the only serious landmark in the entire area was the giant inter-planetary telescope at Jodrell Bank which you could just see from some of the paddocks. Its privacy, its good, damp, green land and its calcium soil seemed potentially perfect for rearing horses.

Robert attacked the entire project with immense style. He sought expert advice on the quality of the land, and then he ploughed up the paddocks which they judged were in a flood-plain to the River Dane, and he laid down a complete drainage system. He had top architects design his barns, the paddocks were all newly fenced with post-and-rail. He studied the National Stud’s operation at Newmarket, copied what he liked best, instructed his builders to renovate the great archway into the courtyard which supported the grand clock tower. There was a beautiful lawn set into the middle of the yard with a wide gravel path around its perimeter. With his normal brutal adherence to ‘the numbers’ and carefully advised by his father, Robert brought the stud farm up to scratch ‘right on budget’.

When it was finished, the Swettenham Stud looked as if it had been there for ever. As a matter of fact, so did Robert, elegantly tailored as usual, with a Rolls Royce purring in the background as he chatted to his new stud groom Joe French. All around the property the staff addressed him with the courteous familiarity of the more feudal reaches of the English countryside, ‘’Morning, Mr Robert …’, ‘By the way, Mr Robert, would that filly have a bit of a chance at Haydock on Friday?’

He renovated the turreted seventeenth-century manor house, repainting its stucco exterior gleaming white. Flower beds were planted, new trees set around the grounds, while Christine began re-decorating the interior. Robert began to fill the new paddocks with the broodmares he had collected in his few years of ownership. There was Audrey Joan, a sprinting filly he had bought after she had won the Portland Handicap with a smashing victory over Close Call and Forlorn River and who would later produce him four stakes winners. There was his lovely grey filly Flying By, a top-class sprinter who had cost him more than 9000 guineas at the December sales. Soon there would be his extremely tough brown filly Tora Santa, who was by the 1964 Derby winner Santa Claus, and who had won for Robert a big twenty-two-runner maiden at Ascot. Pride of place in the main paddock would go to his beloved Brief Star, heroine of the Ayr Gold Cup.

By the time Robert and Christine moved in, their first son Guy was seven years old and, with his two younger brothers, Ben and Adam, a new and enlarged Sangster dynasty was already in the making. Surrounded by his family, his broodmares and his paddocks and staff, Robert felt for the first time in his life that he had truly come home. Here at last was the environment he loved, far from the daily hassle and hustle that all young businessmen cope with as they take on more and more responsibility from their fathers.

Robert, at thirty-one, was now the kingpin at the Vernon Organization, relied upon by Sangster Senior to ensure the day-to-day running of their empire. But even he was unable to put into profit the division which handled credit betting on horseracing. Robert tried. He even tried to steer some of the more chancy bets of his own through the firm, on the basis that if he was to lose, he may as well lose it to the company. But, being Robert, there was something of quid pro quo to his thoughtfulness. Nick Robinson says it was simple really. Robert only bet with Vernons if it was a real long-shot which probably would not win. He would call Nick in the morning and say, for instance, ‘Put £25 on for me this afternoon, would you? On your Vernons account, Bright Hopes at Newmarket this afternoon, see if he will give you 16–1

Nick would telephone Vernons sometime before the race and ask for the odds, only to be told, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Robinson, we cannot give you better than 100–8 on that horse.’

‘Oh, you could do a bit better than that, I’m an old customer. Ask the manager for me, would you?’

Nick would then hear a rustling and someone call: ‘Er, Mr Robert. I’ve got Mr Robinson on the line. He wants 16–1 about Bright Hopes. She’s only 100–8 on our board.’ And then, in the distance: ‘Oh, that’ll be all right, Joe, give him the 16s.’

Of course they nearly always lost, so it never did anyone any harm, but Robert’s instincts were sound: if I lose, the family firm gets the money; if I win, I do better with Vernons than I would anywhere else. Very, very neat. Very, very Sangster. His father might almost have approved. But only just.

By the start of the 1970s Robert’s organization was well-established in sponsoring a major race at the local Haydock Park, the Vernons Sprint Cup. It was run at the October Meeting with a big prize and some very good horses had won it. But in 1971 there was a particular sense of drama. The outstanding sprinter Green God, who had finished first five times in a row that season, was a very questionable favourite because in his last race Green God had managed to get left at the start in France, and lost to Fireside Chat. Most good judges, including Robert, believed that Green God was the fastest horse in England, but in the Vernons he would face two other pretenders to the sprint championship, Sweet Revenge, who had won two big races in France demolishing Fireside Chat both times, and Apollo Nine, who had shouldered a massive weight of nine stone five pounds to win the Stewards Cup at Goodwood in August. The whole of England was talking about the ensuing six-furlong battle at Haydock Park which would surely decide the fastest horse in the country. Robert, by now a director of the racecourse, was as ever heavily into the ‘crack’ in the members’ bar, talking to trainers, owners, breeders and, on this day, managers of stud farms, the stallion masters who would be watching for the horse who might make a top sire. And the horse they were all watching was Green God.

On the day before the big sprint, there was a large gathering in the members’ bar discussing the day’s events, but more particularly discussing the forthcoming clash between Green God, Sweet Revenge and Apollo Nine. Robert was with a group of Irish bloodstock agents, everyone talking to everyone, whether they knew each other or not, as is the general form on such occasions. Robert was talking to his old friend Jack Doyle who pointed out that the tall, dark-haired young Irishman ‘across the way’ had settled terms with Green God’s owner David Robinson. The horse would be sold this evening for £160,000 and the deal would stand no matter what happened in the race. Green God would run in the colours of Mr Robinson for the last time tomorrow, leased back to his owner just for the day, and then he would leave England to take up stud duties at Castle Hyde in Tipperary.

How, precisely, did they arrive at that figure? That was what Robert wanted to know. What if Green God gets beaten?

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘that’s where they start. The buyers’ syndicate assumes he will get beat. If that should be the case, I would think they would hope to stand him at perhaps £1000 to cover a mare, which they plan to do about forty times a year. That’s £120,000 in three years. That means each share will cost £3000, because there are always forty shareholders. So he’s got to cover another forty mares during his first three years to get all the shareholders out clean on their investment. Well, he may not quite do that, but I don’t think an extra thirty would be asking a lot. And then they are out very little in terms of cash.’

‘But’, said Robert, ‘what if he wins?’

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Jack. ‘That’s what that syndicate is fervently hoping. Then, as Champion Sprinter, Green God will probably stand at £1500, and forty mares will earn £60,000 in a season. In three seasons he will have earned £180,000. And, if he covers a few extras for the farm and perhaps six or eight for the syndicate members, there’ll be another £15,000 in the pot each year. In three years that’s £65,000 profit, less the cost of his keep. If he is successful, which we won’t really know until his fifth year, there will be a serious amount of cash around for these brave fellows who have just risked £160,000.’

‘Christ!’ said Robert thoughtfully. He looked across at the young Irishman. He seemed such a countryman and here he was representing a group of Irish breeders risking phone numbers on the purchase of a racehorse. As far as Robert could see they had a long-term bet of nearly £100,000 riding on this race tomorrow. Now that was serious. Suddenly all that he had done in racing, all the fun and laughter and betting he had done in partnership with Eric Cousins seemed of little consequence. These Irishmen were playing a major game and Robert felt a weird compulsion to be part of it. He had just received a crash course in how modern thinkers were basing their judgments on the syndications of stallions. Forty shareholders, putting up three times the cost of one covering for a share. You ‘get out’ in three years, after that you are on the gravy train. It was new, but it already made rock-solid financial sense to Robert, and he could not stop thinking about it, through all of the hours that led up to the running of the fifth Vernons Sprint Cup.

The following afternoon when the runners came belting out of the stalls Robert could not take his eyes off Green God. He watched Lester Piggott try to straighten him out after a bad break, saw the horse keep hanging to his left in the middle of the pack, as Apollo Nine and Sweet Revenge fought it out in the lead. Then he saw Lester ask him to quicken, stared enthralled as Green God came to deliver his challenge at the furlong, felt his heart leap as Sweet Revenge swerved violently. And he stood rapt in admiration as Piggott kept his mount straight and drove Green God past the post almost a length to the good. Sweet Revenge was second, Apollo Nine two and a half lengths further back in third place.

Robert reckoned he had seen two great professionals in action in the past twenty-four hours: Lester Piggott, who had ridden this fiery son of the equally fiery Red God to victory; and the young Irishman, who had staked so much money on a six-furlong sprint for the championship of England. Late that afternoon, back in the members’ bar, everyone was talking about Green God, his pedigree and his prospects as a stallion. Robert walked over to talk to Jack Doyle who was deep in conversation with the young Irish purchaser. ‘Hello, Robert,’ said Jack. ‘Will you have a drink with us? I don’t believe you two have met have you.’

‘Well, I know of course who you are, sir,’ said the Irishman. And he leaned forward to shake the hand of Robert Sangster. It was a handshake which would begin a lifelong friendship, a friendship which would change the world of bloodstock breeding for ever, would send prices for young racehorses to heights never before contemplated. ‘I’m John Magnier,’ he said.