To be a great jockey takes character as well as ability and Geoff Lewis, whom we have lost at 89, had that in spades. As the sixth of a Welsh labourer’s 13 children, he put in a 5.30 a.m. milk round before he went to school. When the family moved to London, and before he started on five shillings a week as an apprentice to Ron Smyth in Epsom, he was a diminutive pageboy at the Waldorf hotel, a role that wasn’t aided by his severe stutter. ‘It was sometimes so bad,’ he once said, ‘that if I paged somebody they’d probably left before I could get the name out.’
The film clips of Mill Reef recycled on Lewis’s death were a reminder of what a special horse he was in 1971, winning the Derby by two lengths, the Eclipse by four and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes by six before going on to scorch clear of the champion filly Pistol Packer and take the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Sensibly, the previous autumn when he was hired as his stable jockey by Noel Murless, Lewis accepted the job only with the proviso that he would continue to be free to ride Mill Reef for Ian Balding and he partnered him to every one of his 12 victories.
My favourite Lewis story dates from his days as a trainer just up the road from me in Epsom. A bloodstock agent called to interest him in a yearling: ‘He’s lovely Geoff. Real good bone, sound limbs, a straight mover. Honestly the only thing I can find to criticise is that he’s got little balls.’ ‘L-l-little b-b-balls,’ replied the trainer. ‘I’ve got l-l-little b-b-balls and I won the Derby!’
The only time that stutter became a problem, his fellow jockey Jimmy Lindley once told me, was when Lewis and Lester Piggott were up before the stewards after a mid-race fracas. Never one to miss an opportunity, and aware that Lewis’s stutter became worse when he was agitated, Piggott made an allegation so monstrous against Lewis that he turned red with fury and became literally incoherent. After three minutes the stewards gave Lester the race. As a trainer Lewis proved a good judge of what was in his yard: a former assistant told me of the year he backed himself to train 60 winners. He hit the total and every lad in the yard was given £1,200 in days when that was still money.
The trainer with a yardful of talent right now is William Haggas. Last Saturday was Haggas Day with a vengeance. At Haydock he ran three horses in two handicaps worth £50,000 to the winner. Valiancy took the first at 4-1, then in the Old Borough Cup the Haggas-trained The Reverend at 7-2 won, beating his 7-1 stable companion Dramatic Star by a neck.
I was at Ascot where Maureen Haggas was in charge of the stable’s six runners. The first, the two-year-old Sea The Stars colt Maltese Cross, was beaten only a neck over a mile by Brian Meehan’s useful River Card, who had the benefit of previous racecourse experience. The next three races all went to Haggas runners: Crown of Oaks won the 1m2f handicap by six lengths, the Frankel-sired Tenability completed a four-timer holding off Ralph Beckett’s Push The Limit in a final furlong duel, and the fillies handicap went to 2-1 favourite Abloom, a truly handsome dark grey.
At that point I suggested to a happy Mrs Haggas that what we ordinary punters needed was merely to touch the hem of a Haggas-owned garment. Admittedly their Binhareer was only third in the next race but you ignore Haggas horses this autumn at your peril. Tenability is improving with every run and if the ground is soft (which Mrs H. says doesn’t happen that often at Newmarket) then Crown of Oaks could be a real prospect for the Cambridgeshire.
Form matters but sometimes coincidence helps. When I visited Dominic Ffrench Davis’s Lambourn yard last year, when many of the inmates were owned by Kia Joorabchian’s Amo Racing, the first box I entered contained the strapping grey Mirabeau owned appropriately by the Ffrench revolution. Spotting him at Ascot dropped back to seven furlongs and running on ground to suit, I could not resist an investment at the 40-1 then available. Ridden by Stevie Donohoe he finished a promising third at 20-1 and my 8-1 a place became a value bet. Sadly the Amo juggernaut has moved on from Lambourn to Newmarket under different management, but Dominic showed at that time what he could do with some decent horses. It would have shown a little more style if Joorabchian had still sent him two or three.
The other decent each way value bet for me on Saturday incidentally was the 12-1 starting price for Kind of Blue in Haydock’s Sprint Cup. He got stuck in traffic and bumped by a rival in the same Wathnan ownership but still finished second. I’ve already started backing him for the Ascot sprint on Champions Day.