A CHILDHOOD HERO.

​I cannot explain it and have no idea how long the worship continued for, but during my pre-teenage years, as my fascination with horse racing embedded itself into the very branch and root of my being, Bobby Beasley was my hero. Though perhaps hero is the wrong word to use. I was too wet-behind-the-ears, lacking any sort of credible equine or racing judgement, to form opinions on who amongst the jockey ranks was better than anyone else. But I remember distinctly, and I recall very little about my childhood days, willing Beasley to do well, especially in the big races. Not that outside of the Grand National and Cheltenham Gold Cup I knew which were the races that looked good on a jockey’s c.v.
I was 7-years-old when Beasley won the Grand National on Nicholas Silver. Perhaps I watched the race on the B.B.C., though I seem to think it was a little later before the house was graced by a television. Certainly, like many race-goers, I had a soft spot for greys and Nicholas Silver was a grey, the last grey to win the Grand National before Neptune Collonges got up in the dying strides to deny J.P.McManus a much deserved success. So perhaps the hero-worship of Beasley and my liking for greys materialised on the same day at Aintree.
Thinking about it, what may have drawn my imagination toward Beasley was his association with Paddy Sleator and all those, to me, iconic horses he brought over from Ireland to plunder races far easier to win than what he could find in the Irish race programme. Arthur Thomas held the licence at Guy’s Cliffe but it was Bobby and Sleater’s men who trained the horses. Horses such as Scottish Memories, Black Ice and Rupununi, spring to mind. He also was associated with two other greys, both trained by Fulke Walwyn, Anzio and Richard of Bordeaux.
Of course, I was not aware of Beasley’s self-induced slide into temporary obscurity, his spiral into alcoholic dependency or whether his character was worthy of a young boy’s adoration. In fact, it was only when I read Declan Colley’s book ‘When Bobby met Christy’ that I became aware of the truth of Beasley’s sad plight.
I have just finished ‘Second Start’, Beasley’s own account of his life and though it is far from a masterpiece of prose it is a book well worth scouting round for.
Beasley was described by Declan Colley as an Irishman through and through. Yet he was born in London, died in Hastings, aged 74, a great achievement considering how he abused his liver and body for so many years, and lived at least half his life in England. But I suppose you can take the boy out of Ireland but you cannot take Ireland out of the boy.
Fred Winter thought enough of Beasley to have him as his stable jockey. This was in the time of Pendil and Bula so it must have been before Richard Pitman ascended to the position of stable jockey. Indeed, it was while riding for Winter that Beasley’s alcoholism became apparent to all. He first retired when stable jockey to Winter, ashamed that his drinking was preventing him to doing justice to the Uplands horses. Winter tried to dissuade him, first promising the job would be left open in case he had a change of mind and then offering him a certainty so that he could retire on a winner. He declined and his ‘final’ ride finished third.
Beasley won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Roddy Owen, the Champion Hurdle on Another Flash and of course the Grand National on Fred Rimell’s Nicholas Silver. He was first jockey to both Rimell and Winter and yet his drinking forced him out of both jobs. The saddest aspect of Beasley’s career, as successful as it was, is that you would have had to go a long distance to find anyone, jockey or trainer, who did not place Beasley as one of the greatest Steeplechase jockeys of all-time. Quite amazingly, as his heroic comeback proved, culminating with him winning the 1974 Cheltenham Gold Cup on the Pat Taaffe trained Captain Cristy, his drinking did not lay a hand on his natural affinity with horses.
‘When Bobby Met Christy’, though a truthful insight into the trials and tribulations of Beasley the alcoholic, it is broadly about a hero’s return to the limelight. Beasley’s autobiography ‘Second Start’ is painted with darker colours and for the most part is an A to Z on how any man can fall from grace especially if aided by religious dogma scratched on the soul by priests with little idea of the real world and with a hand outstretched for the tenth ‘one for the road’. Chapter 1 of Beasley’s book is comprised of the ten commandments of Alcoholic Anonymous, the organisation that eventually managed to have Beasley sign the pledge of abstinence. You are left in no doubt from the very outset of the route his autobiography will take.
For whatever reason, this old bloke when he was but 7-years-of-age chose one of the great jockeys to be his childhood hero.