the head waiter.

​I wouldn’t suggest Michael Seth-Smith’s biography of Harry Wragg is poor in any way, though, to me, it only ranks as ordinary or okay. And, of course, the book was published back in 1984 and writing styles change over time, and perhaps, though he contributed his own accounts to the book, the subject didn’t give the writer all the insight he might of. Certainly, Harry Wragg’s contributions to the story-lines elevate the narrative as a fresh coat of paint brightens a room.
I am, no doubt, being disingenuous as the opening line of the acknowledgement makes it plain that Geoffrey Wragg, son and inheritor of his father’s stables on his retirement, approached the author at Newmarket in the spring of 1983 to write a biography of his father.
The foreword of the book was supplied by Lester Piggott who first rode for Harry in 1950 and Lester being Lester wished he had ridden Psidium for him in the 1961 Derby. Obviously, a Derby winner that slipped from Lester’s net. I would like to know how many ‘forwards’ Lester wrote over his lifetime, and what the charge was.
Harry Wragg rode in what for me is the mystical era between the two world wars, the era of Elliott, Carslake, Richards, Beary, Childs, etc, a time before I was born where the results, with the exception of classics both flat and jumping, are at best fuzzy in my mind, more like tomorrow’s results than yesterday’s. The contemporary jockeys of Harry Wragg wrote and spoke of horses that only exist for me in the lists of winners of great races and in the yellowed pages of ancient form-books. Because they read to me with the mystery of a whodunit must be the reason why I am so fascinated by the memoirs of jockeys and trainers who Harry Wragg would have associated with day-to-day.
Of course, I am more familiar with Harry Wragg as a trainer than a jockey and it proved how fallible my memory is nowadays to be reminded that he was perhaps even more successful as a trainer than he was as a jockey. Through the 1960’s he trained so many horses whose names resonate still, though in a quiz I would have failed miserably to name the races they won. Sovrango, Violetta, Miralgo, Atilla, Twelth Man, Salvo, Chicago, Intermezzo, Full Dress, Moulton, Furioso and Lacquer, the last horse to do the Irish 1,000 Guineas/Cambridgeshire double, and in the same year. Trainers and owners had a different mindset back in those days. No modern trainer would even consider running a classic winner in a handicap and would be thought half-mad even for entering a Group 1 winner in such a race.
Harry Wragg rode in 11,658 races in Great Britain and Ireland (no evening races, then, remember) during his career, winning 1,774 and was champion jockey in 1941. His best season was ten-years earlier when he won 110 races. As a trainer he was remarkably consistent with his lowest score being 21 in1971 and his highest 46 in 1955. His best year for prize-money was his last, 1982, £259,572.
What I liked about this book is that Harry comes out of it an honest man, with integrity and most definitely a horseman. On page 119, for instance, he tells a story about the King’s filly Sun Chariot and how temperamental she could be. At one point her trainer Fred Darling was even thinking of taking her out of training and returning her to the National Stud, from where the King had leased her. Harry describes how the filly ducked out with him on the way to the gallops and Fred Darling threatened to ‘thrash the life’ out of her with a long tom. As the trainer played hell, Harry said to him, ‘Well, now, if you’d told me this sort of thing would happen, I could have avoided it’. And he took the filly back to where they started, telling the trainer that it would not happen again. And it didn’t, at least not when Harry was riding her.
Incidentally, during the war Harry was a serving soldier, stationed around the Newmarket area and could only ride when he was allowed leave and that was usually only when he had completed a full shift with his unit. Modern jockeys have it so easy, don’t they?