SCOBIE.

​I enjoy racing books that remind me of horses part-forgotten and the names of jockeys, owners and trainers who accompanied me through my adolescent years. At the advanced age I have now arrived at I am liable to forget even the name of this website and can have the devil’s own job of recalling who won the Derby last year, which, sad as it is, doesn’t appal me as much as forgetting the names and achievements of the racing greats, such as Scobie Breasley.
I am telling no untruths when I say that it was only on finding Christopher Poole’s commendable biography of Scobie at the on-line equine bookshop of the National Equestrian Centre that the great Australian jockey resurfaced in my memory. This is a jockey who was a contemporary of Lester Piggott both as he emerged from short trousers and when he was stitching into racing folklore the legend he has become. Yet before Lester was even born Scobie was winning big races in his native Australia, with 5 Caulfield Cups to his name. He rode throughout the 2nd World War, spared the call-up to arms because of an injury to his jaw from a racing falls a few weeks earlier.
Born on the 7th of May 1914 in the delightfully named town of Wagga Wagga, Arthur Edward, to give him his christened forenames, had no other ambition for himself but to follow his father on to the racetrack. On the no-holds barred country tracks of New South Wales he had to learn both the art of race-riding as well as what might be termed ‘the black arts of race-riding’ and as with all of the jockeys from down under I have read about he suffered more than his far share of ‘holidays’ from stewards who on occasion seem to want to achieve little else but ‘send out a message’ to other riders and the public. (After the rather harsh punishment given to Hayley Turner at Royal Ascot last week it seems to be that ‘sending out a message’ remains the chief aim of stewards today)
Scobie rode two of the first Derby winners to enter my consciousness, Charlottown and Santa Claus. Strangely for someone who though perhaps not dominating the riding ranks was one of the top three or more for nearly thirty years, he only rode 4 classic winners, winning the 2,000 and I,000 guineas on one occasion each. He did win, though, an Eclipse, King George and Queen Elisabeth and an Arc and was champion jockey in 1957 and for three years in succession from 1961 to 1963.
When you write down those dates, especially 1957, it is almost as if one is recalling a time so far back in history that there cannot surely be anyone alive today who witnessed racing in those days. It was a time before starting stalls and widespread television coverage, a time when all-weather racing was as unconsidered as men walking on the moon. (If such an adventure actually did occur). A more parochial time, when the sport was both more open to corruption and yet in some undefined way more innocent. A time before the powers-that-be started to mess about with the essence of the sport, when the race to be champion jockey started with the first race of the season and unbelievably ended with the final race of the season. Unlike today, when large chunks of the season are discarded on the grounds that they are ‘inconvenient to the establishment of ‘Champions Day’. I imagine every champion flat jockey from Fred Archer to Scobie rolled in their graves when knowledge of this stupid idea reached the ghosts of permanent pasture.
During the height of his career in Britain, Scobie was one of a number of Australian jockeys riding successfully in this country. Bill Williamson, Ron Hutchinson, George Moore and Garnie Bougoure to name but five others, Scobie being the best of them. Indeed, Scobie Breasley was perhaps one of the best flat jockeys of all time. Unusually, as jockeys do not in the main transfer their talents to the training of racehorses, he was also a very successful trainer, training first from his base at South Hatch, Epsom and then in France and California. when the fancy took Ravi Tikkoo, (owner of Steel Pulse and Hittite Glory) his main patron, to seek success abroad. He finished his training career in Barbados, calling a full-stop to his working life after winning that country’s main race, the Gold Cup, for the fourth time.
I think my fondness for Scobie Breasley and the enjoyment I attained from his biography was because he was at the top of his game in the 1960’s and early 70’s when my interest in flat racing equalled that of National Hunt and I would anticipate with the sort of relish that nowadays only comes naturally for the jumping division of the sport races like the Derby and meetings such as Royal Ascot. His was of a time of 38-runner Lincolns, of 7st 7lb bottom weights, when the large private studs still flourished, when everything was a mite less predictable. A golden age, perhaps. Or is that just a case of ‘Blue Remembered Hills’? Of youthful ignorance continuing to cast a shadow over the mightier glories of the present day and age? And will, in the unlikely event that I survive another twenty years (one might be overly optimistic), will my admiration for Dettori and Moore morph into the sentimentality I seem to reserve for Duncan Keith, Paul Cook, Frankie Durr and others to many to mention? Those were the days, at least I hope they were.