At seven he had been lifted onto his first racehorse to feel the raw quivering power of it
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThis combination, exquisite balance and ruthless will, typified his whole career. He won 4,493 races in Britain, including 30 Classics. Among them were eight St Legers, six Oaks, five 2,000 Guineas, two 1,000 Guineas; and, nine times, the Epsom Derby, then the world’s foremost race on the flat. When he won it first, in 1954 on Never Say Die, he was just 18; when he reached his ninth, in 1983, he set a record that still stands.
To achieve that he first starved his body, keeping it roughly two stone below his natural ten-stone weight: dry toast for breakfast, scraps of protein, no carbs, until his frame, tall for a jockey, was lean as a rake. Then he hit on the idea, when he was still a schoolboy racer, of shortening his stirrups and perching high above the saddle, almost bent in two. There, even at speed, he could keep his balance like a circus rider. Most other jockeys tried to copy him, but he was the first.
This made no difference to his attitude. He was never a complacent stable jockey, content to do what trainers or owners wanted. He knew horses, and a rider like him did not need instructions. His best seasons were with Noel Murless, a royal trainer, in the late 1950s and Vincent O’Brien in the 1970s, but he left both in bitterness and, each time, went freelance. For him the only point of a stable connection was to find and ride the fastest horse.
In search of wins he travelled round the country, from racecourse to racecourse, riding through muck and rain, to win the Champion Jockey title, even though he got nothing for it. It peeved him intensely that in 1963 he lost the title by one race, on the last day of the season, to the great Australian jockey Scobie Breasley, and he made sure he won it for the next eight years. Money, though, was also an obsession. His mother had stressed the importance of getting cash and hanging on to it.
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