Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings. Nick Robinson
little stand with a good view down the course. Eric Cousins had decided the horse was better over distances of beyond the mile of the Lincoln, and today’s test would be over an extended ten furlongs. The trainer mentioned to Robert before they went off that the start was the problem. Chalk Stream hated ‘jumping off’ and was apt to ‘dwell’ making up his mind whether to run. This split-second indecision had cost him his chance in the Lincoln, but today Eric Cousins fervently hoped he would break fast with the rest of the field.
But this time luck was against him. They came under starter’s orders in a good line, but as the tapes flew up, only ten horses rushed forward. Chalk Stream had done it again. Eric Cousins’s whispered oath was not heard by Mrs Sangster, but they all saw Chalk Stream hesitate and finally break several lengths behind the field. ‘Is he out of it?’ asked Robert. ‘Not yet,’ replied his trainer, but the field was racing towards the home turn with Chalk Stream very definitely last with a great deal of ground to make up. His rider, the five-pound-claiming apprentice Brian Lee, was sitting very still and then, halfway round the turn Chalk Stream began to improve. The commentator was calling out the leaders, ‘Royal Chief, Windy Edge, Laird of Montrose, Tompion, the favourite Chino improving …’
Chalk Stream was in the middle of the pack as they came off the turn. Lee switched him off the rails and the big gelding set off gamely down the outside. They hit the two-furlong pole. Chino struck the front, chased hard by Chalk Stream still with two lengths to find. The Liverpool crowd roared as Lee went to the whip and Chalk Stream quickened again. As they hit the furlong pole he burst clear of the field and then drew right away to win by three lengths from Tompion, with Chino the same distance back in third. Robert Edmund Sangster nearly died of excitement. Forget Tiny, this was the biggest moment of his life. To this day he says, ‘I will never forget the Liverpool Autumn Cup. Not if I live for a hundred years.’
Robert ordered the finest champagne for the celebration. Dinner went on into the small hours. ‘I wish’, he told his friends late that night, ‘that this day would never end.’ And in a sense, it never did. Robert Sangster had taken the very first steps towards becoming, one day, the most powerful owner and breeder of thoroughbred horses in the entire two-hundred-year modern history of the Sport of Kings.
Robert Sangster learned, before the 1961 racing season even opened, what it was like to be hit hard by the Jockey Club handicapper. For the Liverpool Spring Cup, Chalk Stream was put up nine pounds in the weights. In addition, on the day of the race, he behaved very mulishly at the start, finally condescended to run, and trailed in ninth of thirteen. Fortunately Eric Cousins, liking neither the weights nor Chalk Stream’s general attitude, had told Robert on no account to have a bet. The weight was a problem, but the real trouble was in Chalk Stream’s mind. In Cousins’s opinion he may have been one of those horses which carry for a long time bad memories of a race. They remember the whip and the aching that all athletes experience in the final stages of a hard struggle. Chalk Stream had had a tough one at Liverpool in November and he did not really want to line up at the start ever again.
But he had an easy time in the Spring Cup – the jockey did not drive him out when defeat was inevitable – and Eric again tested him in mid April, and he finished second at Wolverhampton coming with a strong, steady run from two furlongs out. Again it was a not hard race, nothing like the great battle he had fought in November, coming from far back to victory when the money was down. Eric Cousins decided the time was right to bring Chalk Stream to a fever pitch of fitness and send him out to try and win the Great Jubilee Handicap worth nearly £3000 (probably £30,000 in today’s currency) on the fast, flat course of Kempton Park to the south-west of London.
Naturally Robert and his team, who would be making the two-hundred-mile journey south for the race, wanted to know two things: was he going to run well, and did they have a bet. For once Eric Cousins was cautious. He told Robert very carefully, ‘In a handicap like this he cannot afford to throw it away at the start. If he is difficult and gives them an eight- or ten-length lead before they start, he will not win. But we are in with only seven stone five, and if he runs like he did at Liverpool he might just make it.’
The situation was not only forked, it was double-edged. To bet or not to bet? Chalk Stream’s two defeats in 1961 had got four pounds off his back, his apprentice jockey would claim three more. But this race would sway with the weights. Chalk Stream must carry three more pounds than he did when he last won. That three extra represented one and a half lengths – the distance that separated the first four in last year’s Lincoln. Could Chalk Stream deliver again? Would he break fast at the start? Would Robert dare to go in with another £100 bet? The conundrum preoccupied Robert almost to the exclusion of all else. He loved the academic aspect of this sport, measuring risk against hard cash. Trying to make a sound decision without giving away £100 to Major Ronnie Upex, the rails layer for the big bookmakers Heathorns with whom Robert had a fluctuating credit account.
Robert did not just like the world of racing, he was rapidly becoming addicted to it. He and Eric Cousins would sit for hours over at the Tarporley stables discussing their problems over a few glasses of champagne. Finally, one evening, Eric came up with a master plan, based on the fact that Robert would not put the money down until they knew the horse was racing with the rest of them. It would take split-second timing, but it was possible, of that Eric had no doubt.
On the day of the race, the scrum of the Birkenhead Park second team was sorely depleted, as its tight-head prop forward headed for the owners’ stand at Kempton Park. Two other members of the pack were also going to be at Kempton and there was an atmosphere of tense excitement as Robert and Christine flew down the old A34 road towards Oxford in that 100mph Mercedes sports car of his. Nick Robinson was actually going the other way, speeding one hundred miles cross-country to Worcester to join his grandfather who had a runner there. But the Great Jubilee would be on national radio and Nick was already tuned in. He had already taken his chance and placed a credit bet of £25 on Chalk Stream to win at starting price. It was a quieter, less restricted time in England – only about one-fifth of the cars of today were being driven. There were no speed limits on fast country roads, the breathalyzer had not been invented, and it was indeed a privileged time for young men like Robert Sangster and Nick Robinson.
The horses came into the Kempton paddock and Robert and Christine watched Chalk Stream walk round. Eric thought he looked a bit on his toes, a bit restless. The trainer spoke tersely to his young jockey, Brian Lee, instructing him not to leave things too late, to set off for home two furlongs out with a steady run, and then to drive him to the line, if necessary under the whip.
The runners left to go down to the start and Christine and Eric headed to a high point in the grandstand while Robert walked down the sloping lawn towards the bookmakers. He located Heathorns’ pitch and strolled up to look at the prices. Chalk Stream was fluctuating between 7–1 and 9–1, drifting in the market, if anything. There was a big crowd and he stood unnoticed, as the throng hustled and bustled to place their bets.
‘They’re at the post!’ called the racecourse announcer. And within a couple of minutes Eric Cousins had his binoculars trained on the green and blue colours of Chalk Stream and Brian Lee far out across the course. Robert edged nearer to Heathorns, keeping his back to Major Ronnie Upex and his eyes on the grandstand, from which Eric was watching from the pre-planned spot.
The starter called the horses in. Chalk Stream moved up with the rest of them. Robert edged back further. ‘They’re under starter’s orders!’ – Chalk Stream was standing still – ‘And they’re off! Chalk Stream suddenly rushed forward, racing away with the leaders. Eric Cousins’s hat flew from his head and he held it aloft for his young owner to see. Robert whipped round and shouted, ‘£100 to win Chalk Stream, please, Major. I’ll take the 8–1.’
‘Eight hundred pounds to one, down to Mr Sangster,’ said Major Upex to his clerk, and even as he spoke the field was already through the first furlong galloping fast down the back