By Emma Berry
NEWMARKET, UK–Though he is now a resident of Switzerland, Lester Piggott still has strong ties to his former home of Newmarket and returned to the town this week in the build-up to the QIPCO Guineas meeting at the Rowley Mile next weekend.
Attending a special event at Palace House to mark the 60th anniversary of his first 2,000 Guineas victory aboard Crepello (GB) (Donatello II {GB}), the 81-year-old was joined by Julie Cecil, the daughter of the horse's trainer Sir Noel Murless, who brought with her four leather-bound scrapbooks lovingly kept by Crepello's owner-breeder Sir Victor Sassoon and marking his entire career. Among the many newspaper cuttings, the books include a telegram to announce Crepello's birth on March 19, 1954, which reads simply “Crepescule [sic] chestnut colt 19th good strong foal.”
Little did the breeder know it at the time, but that good strong colt, only the second foal of Crepuscule (GB) (Mieuxce {Fr}), would become the mare's second Classic winner after his half-sister Honeylight (GB) won the 1,000 Guineas of 1956, ridden by Edgar Britt. A year later, Piggott won his first Newmarket Classic with Crepello, who would also go on to become the second of his nine Derby winners.
Having won the first two colts' Classics, Crepello broke down before he was able to challenge for the Triple Crown in the St Leger but Julie Cecil told the assembled guests that her father had always wanted to try to run the horse in the following year's July Cup.
“It was his plan and he always thought that Crepello had the speed to do it–either that or dad was losing his marbles,” she quipped.
It is another of Piggott's Epsom winners, the Vincent O'Brien-trained Sir Ivor (Sir Gaylord), who remains closest to the jockey's heart.
“Sir Ivor was probably the best of them,” he recalled. “Every year we had these American horses in Tipperary and you never knew whether they would stay–it was always doubtful–so you had to wait as long as possible with them. Sir Ivor was really a mile-and-a-quarter horse but he won the Derby because he was the best horse. In the Arc he was beaten by a brilliant horse [Vaguely Noble] and he didn't quite get the distance but he was still a great horse to me.”
Throughout the evening Piggott, who engaged in a Q&A session with author and racing historian Sean Magee, proved that he not only retains a razor-sharp memory but an equally cutting wit. Famous throughout his career not just for his brilliance in the saddle but his ruthlessness in trying to 'jock off' his weighing-room colleagues if he felt their horse had the best chance in the race, Piggott admitted, “At that time we didn't have agents and we had to do our best.”
Magee quizzed further, asking him about the 1977 Derby, which Piggott won on The Minstrel (Northern Dancer), “Did you try to get the ride on Blushing Groom?”
“Well everybody thought so, didn't they?” Piggott retorted with a grin.
“But it was quite impossible really,” he continued. “He was owned by the Aga Khan and trained by Francois Mathet and they didn't like English people anyway. So it would have been quite impossible. I rode The Minstrel and won.”
For all Piggott's Classic success–which includes 30 victories in Britain alone–it's clear that he retains the utmost admiration for Robert Sangster's dual Arc winner Alleged (Hoist The Flag).
“Alleged was something else really,” he said. “He only ran three times as a 4-year-old. He got jarred up a bit the first time so he couldn't run from May to October but he was one of the greatest horses. He was only beaten once, in the St Leger, and everybody said I went too soon but I thought to myself that day that the Queen's filly [Dunfermline] was nearly unbeatable.”
He added, “You couldn't run Alleged too much and I always felt that his best race really was before the Arc as a 4-year-old when he ran over 10 furlongs in Paris.”
That victory in the Prix du Prince d'Orange is remembered thus in Timeform's Racehorses of 1978: “There was no mistaking that Alleged was back to his very best, or at any rate somewhere very near it. The brilliant acceleration that had been the hallmark of his finest victories was all too evident: he blinded his rivals for speed as soon as Piggott gave him the word early in the straight.”
Piggott kept his cards close to his chest when asked which colt might have the Timeform scribes waxing lyrical after the QIPCO 2,000 Guineas, saying only, “It's difficult, very difficult. We've seen three very nice horses win in the last few weeks [Eminent, Barney Roy and Al Wukair] and I think Churchill will have to be at his best to beat them.”
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