Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings. Nick Robinson
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Patrick Robinson and Nick Robinson
Patrick Robinson and Nick Robinson assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780002551328
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008193379
Version: 2016-06-20
To Joe Thomas and Northern Dancer.
They are both gone now, but they left behind an
eternal flame in the Vale of Tipperary.
Throughout this narrative there are frequent references to huge sums of money, some of them in US dollars and some of them in pounds sterling. We did not attempt to convert these into one single currency, which is the standard editorial practice, because the sums – such as the $10.2 million Keeneland yearling – were often such well-known figures that conversion would have been misleading and almost certainly inaccurate since exchange rates can vary by the hour. A sterling rate of 1.75, for instance, would have converted to ‘the £5,828,571.40 Keeneland yearling’. This would plainly have been absurd. The yearling was bred in the USA, the bidding was in dollars and the colt was paid for in dollars. Thus, when in America we have worked in dollars, and when in England or Ireland we have used pounds – occasionally Irish ones, when a stallion involved an Irish-trained horse going to Coolmore Stud in Tipperary.
There is also the occasional mention of the old-fashioned ‘guineas’ (one pound and one shilling). This is still used at English bloodstock auctions and, where appropriate, we have utilized this measurement. The title of the one-mile classics remains in the old racehorse currency – the 2000 Guineas and the 1000 Guineas. These do not, however, bear any relationship to the modern prize money for these races, which is nowadays over £100,000.
Contents
8 The Soft Steps of the Bedouin
9 ‘Would You Sell Him for $30 Million?’
17 The Magic Touch of the Irish
Prologue: The Historic Blackballing of Lord Soames
It was always tense in The Rooms when they were proposing to elect a statesman to membership. Actually, it was always tense in The Rooms whomever they were proposing to elect to membership. But a statesman created a special feeling of apprehension. Such an event happened only every fifty years or so, because, by and large, the Jockey Club did not see statesmen as the right calibre of chap. Most of them had depressingly brilliant intellects coupled with dazzling charm and tact. Or, put in the more ducal vernacular of the Club, they were too clever by half, ‘too smarmy’.
The Earl of Rosebery, during his Lordship’s tenure as Prime Minister of England,