the bumpity-bump riding of the great pat eddery.

​If I were a child of an alcoholic parent the most important aspect of my life to steer clear of would be alcohol. If only Pat Eddery had the wisdom at any early age to follow my example and lead a life of temperance. In a former life I might have been a Salvation Army drum-beating pamphleteer. ‘Alcohol is the phlegm of Satan’. ‘A cup of tea the nectar from heaven.’ I’m addict, too, it seems.
I must admit I was never a fan of Pat Eddery. I thought his riding style ugly and a reflection of an overly strong will to win at all-costs. I am doubtless wrong in my prejudice as all the great trainers of his time queued up to pay for his services and they would know a whole lot more about jockeyship than I shall know about anything. Vincent O’Brien – the greatest trainer to live and breathe, at least until that other O’Brien came along – thought him good enough to fill Lester Piggott’s boot when the tall man swanned off to ride for a quite good trainer called Cecil in Newmarket, a move I suspect he came to regret. If Lester does regret. Which I doubt as he has no need.
What I didn’t like about Pat Eddery’s riding was the way he bumped the saddle to propel his mount forward. Again, perhaps I am wrong, but I couldn’t help but think that given the thinness of the saddles jockeys use he must have given a lot of horses sore backs. Vincent O’Brien saw nothing wrong in his style of riding, nor did Peter Walwyn or Prince Khalid Abdullah. Or anyone, great or small, perhaps. Just me. But then I didn’t like the way Lester rode either, being unable to forgive the brutality of the ride he gave The Minstrel to beat the artistic and kindly Willie Carson on Hot Grove. Why can’t all flat jockeys ride the Willie Carson way? Or imitate Steve Cauthen or Joe Mercer?
He won everything there was to win, of course, more than once and on many occasion more than three times, including the jockeys’ title when it was a title befitting a champion.
To my surprise, after reading Alan Lee’s splendid biography of Eddery – it is Lee’s first-class prose that make the book so readable – he considered El Gran Senor the best horse he ever rode, a horse, in similarity to Dancing Brave, the horse I thought he would nominate as the best, that is best known for not winning the Epsom Derby. Now, to prove my fallibility once more, in the book Eddery says of El Gran Senor ‘he was a bit like Dancing Brave, in being a smashing little horse who would fly to the front as if the others were standing still, but find nothing extra once he was there’. Damning with faint praise, methinks. In one sentence he is informing us that the best horse he ever rode and the horse so many consider as one of the great racehorses of modern time, wanted nothing more than to chuck the race once in front. Should a horse be termed ‘great’ if it has little relish for the battle? Given this astonishing revelation it is no surprise both horses were not campaigned as 4-year-olds as no doubt both would have become ‘monkeys’ and burst the bubble of their excellence.
Alan Lee’s book was published in1992, before Eddery brought his career to a close. I suspect, like many sportsman before and since, alcohol filled the void created by no longer having the discipline of race-riding in his life. His father was an alcoholic, so perhaps he possessed a disposition to travel the same path. Yet he said in the book that alcohol was responsible for his father’s early death, was that not a warning to him?
What I did like about the Pat Eddery presented in ‘To Be A Champion’ was that he acknowledged the lucky breaks that came his way and when he got the ride on Dancing Brave he thought Greville Starkey was harshly treated as he considered he had ridden the horse in the Derby the same way he himself would have ridden the horse. Whether Starkey felt the warmth of his camaraderie and sympathy was any sort of compensation for being jocked-off the best horse he had ever ridden is not on record, at least as far as I am aware.
But when I think of Pat Eddery it is that bumpity-bump style of riding that comes too readily to mind. Oh, and this may be more relevant as to my prejudice, he beat Bustino and the nice Joe Mercer in the King George and Queen Elisabeth Stakes at Ascot, the greatest flat race of all-time, apparently. Better than this year’s Derby? I think not. But that might also be prejudice.