Stormez. Tiny little horse that seemed to take an age clambering over each fence but had the heart of a lion.
Thanks for that Bustino. Very interesting. I hadn't realised By Thunder was fancied for 2 classics. I only picked up on him at a later stage in his career, when the tactics changed
One of the trainers I really liked in the '60s/'70s was Arthur Budgett. As well as his classic horses he always seemed to have a couple of good handicappers and two I distinctly remember were Petty Officer and Prominent. Petty Officer won 10 races from the age of 3 to the age of 7. He won The Vaux Gold Tankard and The Timeform Gold Trophy during his long career and also won the Group 2 Jockey Gold Cup. Prominent won 16 races from the same age range and coincidentally the same years (1970 to 1974). Prominent won 2 John Smiths and also won a big handicap run at Goodwood then called the PTS Laurels Hcp. He was also classy enough to win the Prix Foy and be placed in several Group races. You don't seem to get horses like this today and I wonder if the pattern is the problem. Horses like these, good enough to compete in Group Races, had to earn their corn in handicaps. Today they'd be found an easy Group 3 every couple of months and never suffer the indignity of having to give weight to a load of handicappers. It's a lose lose situation. A loss for handicaps and a loss for the pattern, and ultimately a loss for competitive racing.
Nothing worse than seeing a 4 horse Group event. How can that be good for breeding? After the horse is put to some out of the way stud, an owner pays a few thousand to put his mare to a sire that was lucky enough to stagger into a place against a few pluggers on a rain affected course. Wonderful.
Hi Bustino. Arthur Budgett's name always makes me smile. I spent a week with a friend at Blackpool in 1964 and, after seeing that the "milllions of years old two headed monster" on the Golden Mile was actually papier mache, we agreed that the whole thing was just daylight robbery. Travelling home, we saw in the paper that Scobie was riding a horse of the same name in the July Cup. Convinced the omen was unbeatable, we got off the bus and dashed into the bookies to back him. Alas, the race had finished only seconds before and it was a photo finish. And, though the bookies bet 1/10 that the favourite, Matatina, ridden by Lester, would win- and despite the photo taking over 20 minutes- Daylight Robbery won at 100/8. Destiny! PS. I remember seeing Arthur Budgett interviewed. He seemed a lovely man.
Hi Tamerlo, good to hear from you and great story. I looked up Daylight Robbery and reckon Budgett must have bred him as well as trained him. Though he never spent a lot of money he bought wisely into good families: for example his purchase of Chorus Beauty from Holliday and from the Blue Peter family (that gave him an Oaks 2nd and 2 Derby winners). If you look at Daylight Robbery you see her grandam is a mare called Bardia, who was bred by Dick Hollingsworth out of his root-mare Felsetta (family of Buoy, Bireme, Cut Above and Talent). Budgett developed his own stirp of this family through Daylight Robbery's dam Luminant. She presented him with a mare called Death Ray who produced for him that good colt More Light (by his own Morston: Dick Hern trained him). But more important she delivered a High Line daughter called Shoot a Line, who as a 3yo ran one average race when 5th in the Oaks behind her relative and stablemate Bireme. Shoot a Line won the Cheshire Oaks, Ribblesdale, Irish Oaks, Yorkshire Oaks and Park Hill Stakes, and was rated at the end of the season joint-top 3yo filly (alongside Bireme). Later her daughter produced Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch, but Budgett had sold her by then. There are still members of Bardia's family in the Kirtlington Stud I believe and I think the stud is still run by Arthur's son Chris. Yes I always thought he was a nice man and very modest. Apparently the jockey Hide was annoyed by his niceness when in paddock for the Derby he was told by Budgett to give Morston an easy race!
Hi again, Bustino. That Felsetta family you mention...didn't those horses stay like lions! It seems to me I recall hundreds of races/Dick Hern horses where Joe Mercer (particularly at Newbury)-and later Willie Carson- took up the running over 4 furlongs out - and just galloped the opposition into the ground. Where or where have all those stayers gone? You mentioned Shoot A Line. An interesting memory...When she won the Irish Oaks, she beat an Irish filly called Little Bonny and the latter went on to finish second in the Prix Vermeille and win a very valuable handicap at Gulfstream,USA. After her second to Shoot A Line, she contested a listed race up North and Stoute ran his easy Goodwood Extel Handicap winner, the filly Karamita, who had won that race carrying 7st 7lbs. A friend of mine put 10 quid on Karamita, ridden by Lester.I told him he was barmy and that Little Bonny, though unbackable, was the best bet of the year at level weights. As it transpired, they started, unbelievably, as 2/1 joint favs. Though Piggott thrashed Karamita, Little Bonny laughed at her and won hard held.I still feel today that, at 2/1, Little Bonny was the second best value sporting bet in history.
Benstead also trained Baronet to win two Cambridgeshires...no mean feat. The first was before my time but I just about remember the 1980 version as a youngster.
Baronet was a horse with a history. He had 7 letters to his name and was owned by Lady Beaverbrook. He was trained by Dick Hern and looked fairly decent as a 2yo and actually ran in the Craven Stakes of 1975. He was slightly disappointing and though winning a couple of small races went to that years Horses in Training Sales. As well as winning the Cambridgeshire twice these two wins were sandwiched between two 2nds in the same race. Benstead must have done great job with him.
But honestly Arkle is the greatest handicapper ever. He has to be. He won piles of handicaps over several years and but for one race always carried top-weight.
That goes without saying, Bustino, although Arkle Supreme tended to rave about him a bit too much - and members overreacted when he was mentioned. Quite simply, he was the greatest horse in my lifetime. No argument.
