BITS AND BOBS ABOUT BIRMINGHAM AND TIMES LONG GONE.

​The 1981 renewal of Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle had among its eight-runners Ekbalco, who won the race under a wonderful ride from David Goulding, Pollardstown, Derring Rose (the old monkey) Gaye Chance, Sea Pigeon (his final race) and Bird’s Nest. The seventies and eighties were truly the golden age of hurdling. As opposed to modern times when Champion Hurdle trial races lack depth, class and competitiveness. Oh, what we give to have the likes of Monksfield, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon fighting for supremacy this coming season.
In one of Smith brothers autobiographies, it was mentioned that after the war, perhaps to entice runners from ‘up north’, Newmarket staged a Visitors Handicap for horse trained away from headquarters. For no other reason than for the sake of nostalgia and novelty it might be worth Newmarket considering a race with similar conditions.
I have just finished reading ‘When Birmingham Went Racing’ by Chris Pitt and Chas Hammond. Although not to the standard of ‘A Long Time Gone’ or ‘Go Down To The Beaten’, two books by Chris Pitt I could easily have accompany me to the grave, there are some really juicy bits of interesting fact contained within its illuminating pages.
Firstly, you have to address why the country’s second city does not have a racecourse? As Pitt and Hammond’s book make plain, it’s not for the want of trying, with the site at Bromford Bridge, Birmingham’s last crack of establishing a racecourse, a cracking good and fair test by all accounts. The course was closed partly due to flagging attendance numbers and the drive at the time for more housing. Same old, same old, unfortunately. 
If you are asked in a pub quiz where the first race for lady jockeys took place, as long as ‘under Jockey Club rules’ is omitted from the question’, the answer is Small Heath on 30th August 1880, a two-horse affair under the grandiose name of the ‘Stewards’ Stakes’. Little was recorded of the race and nothing at all about the riders and as Small Heath was known for Galloway and Pony racing it is perhaps doubtful if the two runners were thoroughbreds.
The regard for Birmingham as a National Hunt course can only be appreciated when the names of former, present and future Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and Grand National winners appear in the pages of this book. Coloured School Boy, Russian Hero, Roimond, Finnure, Silver Fame, Knock Hard, Sir Ken, Bandalore, Merry Deal, Saffron Tartan, Eborneezer, Anzio and that is only in the years between the end of the 2nd World War and the early 1960’s.
In the 1950’s Alec Kilpatrick trained a grand old chaser by the name of Workboy. Among his thirteen chase victories were two at Birmingham. It’s what he did next that makes him, I believe, not only a positive example of what thoroughbreds can achieve after racing but very nearly a one-off. Ridden by Brigadier C.H. ‘Monkey’ Blacker (Phillip Blacker’s father?) Workboy became a showjumper and not any old showjumper but he was a member of Britain’s winning Nations Cup team in Madrid in 1959. The combination also represented Britain in Lisbon in 1959 and Rome in 1961. At the International Horse Show at the White City, Workboy won the Imperial Cup and was second in the George V Gold Cup. And who ever thought ex-steeplechasers only had one way of jumping?
How many National Hunt races did Steve Donoghe win during his career? Surprisingly – he made no mention of his ‘National Hunt’ career in his autobiography ‘Just My Story’ – the answer is 1. To win a bet with fellow jockey Snowy Whalley, Donogue persuaded Fred Hunt to allow him to ride Lady Diane in the Sutton Handicap Hurdle at Birmingham on November 26th 1912. And he was quickly fifty-quid the richer. To add merit to the achievement the race was run in a blinding snowstorm. He never chanced his arm over jumps again.
On August 29th, 1950, Edward Hide, aged thirteen, and weighing just over 4-stone, had his first ride aboard Copper Wire at Birmingham in the 2-mile 5-furlong Ward End Handicap. He was as good as runaway with and finished last. But it’s not how you start but how you finish and 2,500 winners later it can be said Hide had a very successful career. Yet how times change? Can you imagine the furore if a lad of thirteen only weighed ‘just over 4-stone’ today?
‘When Birmingham Went Racing’ is a book stuffed with well-researched and highly informative fact and as such it would make a fine contribution to anyone’s library of racing books.