sir cecil & sir henry. (and other unrelated matters)

Click hCaptain Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, trainer to the Queen and many members of the aristocracy, began his career in racing as assistant to Atty Persse in 1906 and brought the curtain down in 1968. From his Freemason Lodge stables in Newmarket he trained such horses as Royal Minstrel, Meld, Alcide, Prince Simon, Aureole and Parthia, his only Epsom Derby winner. Mind you, if the Derby kept on escaping his trophy cupboard until 1959, he won plenty of other classic races – the St.Leger, when it was almost as prized as the Derby, 6 times, the 2,000 Guineas once, the 1,000 Guineas 3 times and the Oaks twice. He also landed six Irish classics, the Ascot Gold Cup, during a time when the previous year’s classic horses would stay in training in an effort to boost their stallion potential by adding it to their c.v., 3 times and the Eclipse 4 times. In fact, as a trainer there was practically no major race that escaped his clutches. He was a top-notch trainer in a similar vein to Sir Michael Stoute today.
Most of his career was before my time and when he was training horses like Raise You Ten, Sagacity, Canisbay, Apprentice, Gaulois and Castle Yard, I was not so aware of trainers as I was of the names of horses and the jockeys who rode them. I should imagine I was only becoming aware of trainers and where they trained around the time Boyd-Rochfort retired to allow his young upstart stepson Henry to put one foot on the employment ladder.
It takes a brave or perhaps foolhardy man to marry for the first time at 59, especially to someone as young and attractive as Rohays Cecil, a widowed mother of 4 boys. But that is what Cecil Boyd-Rochfort elected to do in 1944, seemingly to great success.
Stepson Henry’s career as a trainer spanned the entirety, and thankfully, for me anyway, of my love and interest in flat racing and it was only reading Bill Curling’s authoritative biography of Boyd-Rochfort did I appreciate the fact.
For whatever reason you can never forget the names of some horses, even if you cannot recall the races they won. The last good horse Boyd-Rochfort trained was Wolver Hollow, owned by an American (he had many rich American owners during his career) Mrs. Hope Iselin. The horse was anything but easy to train as he hated the new-fangled starting stalls, as did his trainer and was not a good eater, but Boyd-Rochfort had great faith in him and campaigned him in top races from two-years old onwards. He was placed in the Greenham, ran in the 2,000 Guineas and the St.James Palace and was 3rd in the Cambridgeshire. As a four-year-old he won a race in France and was trained again for the Cambridgeshire, finishing 3rd under 54-year-old Scobie Breasley. The owner incidentally was 100 and the trainer 81 years-of-age.
As a five-year-old, trained by first-season trainer and I believe his first-ever winner, Wolver Hollow won the Eclipse and the legend that became Henry Cecil was off and running.
 
Unfortunately I must return to the topic of horses names. I am informed by ‘The Dikler’ in today’s Racing Post that a young horse was recently sold in Ireland that has already been registered with the name Comedy of Errors. Apparently, the name has ‘slipped through the net’. Of course, now the ‘slip-up’ is noticed and made public we can only hope the B.H.A. get off their cushioned asses to ensure the hole in the net is mended and the present owners of this horse are informed that its name must be changed before it sets foot on a racecourse.
For the uninitiated, Comedy of Errors won two Champion Hurdles for Fred Rimell during a period of the sport’s history that is referred to as ‘the golden age of hurdlers’ – Monksfield, Dramatist, Night Nurse Sea Pigeon etc. It is a disgrace that this embargoed name as slipped the net, a disgrace that no one at the B.H.A. recognised the name and its importance to the sport and will go far beyond disgraceful if this name again appears on a race-card.
 
How good is Enable? Turning a blind eye to her official rating, the big race victories she has so far accumulated is becoming very impressive. To the point that if she adds a second King George & Queen Elisabeth and a third Arc, would she not be teetering on becoming one of, if not the greatest, racehorses in flat racing history? If she wins at Ascot, and why shouldn’t she? her rating should go through the roof, not that alone would that qualify her for greatness. But has any other horse in history won two classics, two K G & Q E’s, three Arcs and a Breeders Cup, plus the Eclipse and every other race she will have won come October?
ere to edit.