silver buck.

​The Dickinson’s, father Tony, mother Monica, and the genius son Michael, trained between them some, or indeed most, of the most iconic steeplechasers of the seventies and nineteen-eighties. The list is long and includes The Mighty Mac, Gay Spartan, Bregawn, Wayward Lad, the hugely under-appreciated Badsworth Boy and of course Silver Buck, perhaps the best of the lot. He died in tragic, almost freakish circumstances: he was on his way to the gallops when it began to rain heavily. Graham Bradley, who was riding him, decided to return to the stables to put on waterproofs. It proved to be a fatal, if innocent, decision. As a young horse, Silver Buck was mercurial from the get-go; he could spook at virtually any object, small, large or imagined, and when being mounted gave the impression he was about to be united with a knight in shining, clanking armour. Although he got better with age, he was never, it seems, altogether ‘bomb-proof’. Brad’s waterproof flapped in the wind, spooking ‘Bucket’, as he was affectionately known, to the extent that he bolted across the yard, to collide with a stable wall. As soon as the vet diagnosed a compound fracture of the pelvis, there was only one humane course of action. Whether making the decision to euthanise the best steeplechaser of his age was harder than communicating the tragic news to Silver Buck’s owner, Christine Feather, only Michael Dickinson knows. But it was a sad end, as so frequently is the case for our truly great horses.
If you read Andrew Hoyle’s book about Silver Buck, the surprising feature that comes across is where the Dickinson’s choose to run the horse prior to his tilts at the King George and Cheltenham Gold Cups and the weights they were prepared to allow him to carry.
As a novice chaser he won at Teesside, Stratford and Leicester, as well as Wetherby, as you would expect a Dickinson horse to run. The following season, 1979/80 season, he won at Wincanton, Hereford and walked-over at Nottingham before winning the King George and finishing his season back again at Hereford. The following campaign saw him begin at Worcester and Folkestone. Before he won the 1982 Cheltenham Gold Cup, he lumped 12st-7Ibs to victory at Market Rasen. In his final season he won again at Folkestone and Market Rasen, was second at Chepstow, won a handicap at Cheltenham and finished winning once again at Wincanton.
Can you imagine Nicky Henderson or Paul Nicholls, or indeed any present-day trainer, running a horse as good as Silver Buck at racecourses such as Hereford, Worcester or Folkestone?
And he ran often. None of this getting him ready for the big day with a racecourse gallop or keeping him fresh at home. He ran eight-times as a novice hurdler and seven as a novice chaser. He then ran seven times in his next two seasons, then five, when injury side-lined him between November and March. In fact, his win under 12st 7Ibs in the Cox Moore (sweaters) Handicap Chase at Market Rason was less than two-weeks before his Gold Cup triumph. In each of his final two seasons he ran six-times.
We too easily forget the heroic performances of former great horses. When we list the best steeplechasers of the decades we always, it seems, put the most recent horses above those of the past. This is unfair and short-sighted, especially when you consider that in Silver Buck’s era all-weather gallops were unusual and the myriad of modern-day training aids, treadmills, swimming pools, horse-walkers and solariums and alike were unheard-of and their connections had little choice but to expose them to handicaps on occasion, lumping weights that present-day trainers would shy away from. And if Silver Buck was not as consistent as say Kauto Star or Altior, then it has to be argued in their defence that the calibre of horse they raced against on a regular basis was perhaps a mite bit higher. Night Nurse was one of Silver Buck’s rivals, the great former Champion Hurdler failing to beat him on any of the many occasions they met. Bregawn was not also around but stabled alongside ‘Bucket’. Little Owl was also of Silver Buck’s era. In Kauto Star’s time and Altior and others, though, perhaps the Irish presence was stronger.
Silver Buck won two King George’s and a Cheltenham Gold Cup and as he was usually at his very best at Haydock, if the Betfair was in existence in his day it was a race he would have no doubt added multiple times to his list of big race victories.
Finally, and perhaps I am alone in this, and I appreciate that Michael Dickinson was, and no doubt remains, an ambitious man, but I thought it at the time and still do till this day, that it was a tragedy for the sport of National Hunt when he was lured away by Robert Sangster to try his hand at the flat. Perhaps for the men and women who took over from him at the top of the trainers table it was a good thing he did go first to Manton and then to the United States but would it not have been fascinating to see what further heights he might have attained and how he might have fared against the next genius to grace our sport, Martin Pipe?
I would like to hope that one of the great American equine writers, Laura Hillenbrand or Dorothy Ours, to name but two, have him in their sights. I am loathed to admit it but when it comes to writing about racehorses and horse racing, American writers write with a more authoritative sweep of the pen and broadening their reach to include the society of the times of which they write. You learn so much more than just the subject matter when the American writes about our sport. It grieves me to say so.