derby double.

​I know this is Royal Ascot week, a strange and very unroyal race-meeting in 2020, I am sure you will agree, without pomp, carriage rides or clothes-horse glamour, so it cannot seem too obtuse if I mark this gold-standard landmark of the flat season by posting a piece about the Epsom Derby.
Not this year’s Epsom Derby obviously, (which will be won by Vatican City if he runs, if ‘the boys’ believe he has half a hope of staying the trip. In fact, I know everyone was raving about Siskin after the Irish 2,000 Guineas but if the two were to meet again, even over a mile, I would side with Vatican City. He was, I argue, the most interfered with by Seamie Heffernam’s dreadful riding – was he not banned at all! – and made up more ground in the final furlong than Siskin. I rest my case).
I have just finished reading Bill Curling’s excellent biography of Arthur Budgett, the only man in racing’s modern history to breed, own and train two Derby winners. There is no such wonder as an unputdownable racing book. There are many excellent books on racing subjects that I would like to take to the grave with me but no standalone tome of sheer brilliance. For information purposes only, my five personal favourite racing books are, in no particular order, Ruby Walsh’s autobiography, R.C. Lyle’s book on Brown Jack, Dorothy Ours book about Battleship, ‘A Long Time Gone’ by Chris Pitt and for personal reasons ‘My Friend Spanish Steps’ by Michael Tanner. But I digress.
We must begin with Windmill Girl, dam of 2 Derby winners. As a yearling she was intended for the Newmarket October sales but a few days before she came in from the field with a swelling inside her off-fore. It was intended to put, what for the time, a hefty reserve of 6,000 Guineas on her. In the end she went to the December sales, with a reserve of 5,000 Guineas. Although a good looking, easy moving, yearling no one was prepared to take a chance on that slight swelling on her off-fore and she returned to Arthur Budgett’s stud at Kirtlington to be broken and put into training.
Arthur Budgett had originally bought her as a foal for 1,000 Guineas! She was bought with no greater ambition in mind than to run with the only filly-foal bred that year at the Kirtlington Stud. The second ambition was to sell her as a yearling. To remind you, she bred two Derby winners, Blakeney and Morston.
The reason, I think, I enjoyed Bill Curling’s book so much is that the story it tells is based upon the formative years of my fascination with the sport, when the flat meant as much to me as National Hunt. Budgett’s first good horse, Commisar was before my time, but Derring-Do, Crisp and Even, Huntercombe, Alderney and especially Petty Officer I remember as keenly as Casanova recalled past lovers. And there were others, Polish Warrior, Bugle Boy, Chinwag, Prominent, and Random Shot, the Ascot Gold Cup winner.
And in the period of the middle sixties through to when Budgett retired in 1975 the sport was blessed with a huge number of small breeders and with far fewer mega-breeders, as we do now. It is an aspect of the sport that the B.H.A., to my mind, ignores. For the sport to be fully healthy it needs the smaller studs to have greater access to the top stallions and for there to be greater incentive for people to breed racehorses. Races restricted to owner/breeders of less than five mares would perhaps give some sort of impetus for people to go into thoroughbred breeding. Small-time breeders, along with stock bred at his own stud at Kirtlington, were the bedrock of Budgett’s stable.
And Budgett was a proper racing man, with the same principles as John Hislop, in that racehorses are bred to race, and owners should seek out their limitations, not to featherbedded so as to preserve their value as breeding stock. Blakeney stayed in training as a 4-year-old and ran in the Ascot Gold Cup, finishing second to Precipice Wood. He then finished second again in the King George & Queen Elizabeth, beating Hogarth, the Italian Derby winner, Crepellana, French Oaks winner, Karabas, Washington International winner, and Caliban, trained by Noel Murless. Well, Blakeney beat that lot, unfortunately there was a beast of horse who was in his regal prime at the time called Nijinsky in the race. Not that Nijinsky actually needed to race as he won in a common canter. (Look the race up and discover what ‘common canter’ looks like).
Morston was one of those horses that could have been anything. Budgett thought him the best he ever trained. Tom Dowdeswell who rode him in all his work and who previously in his career had ridden Windsor Lad, Tulyar and Blakeney in their work, was convinced Morston would complete his career unbeaten, which in fact he did as he ruptured a tendon while being prepared for the St.Leger and did not see a racecourse after Epsom.
As I said previously, it was my favourite era of flat racing when Budgett was at his training prime. I never thought I would ever witness a greater flat horse than Nijinsky, though now I dismiss him because he never raced as a 4-year-old. So many of the big races retained titles that weaved their way back into racing history and the Derby, in Morston’s year, had 26-runners all owned by different people and in the main trained by different trainers. Even Vincent O’Brien would only aim one horse at the Derby. And there were owner/breeder/trainers about, as it always was until comparatively recently.
It’s sad in a way that Arthur Budgett’s achievement in breeding, training and owning two Derby winners is not commemorated in some form. I think he is deserving of the honour.