the price of success by peter bromley.

​I abhor cheats; cheats of any kind. I particularly abhor anyone who brings horse racing into disrepute through acts of deception and downright crookedness. So, it may seem inexplicable to some that one of my racing heroes was Ryan Price, the ‘scourge of the Jockey Club’ who lost his licence on one occasion and came within a hair’s breadth of losing it permanently on a second occasion. But a man whose character secured for life the loyalty of two of racing’s greatest jockeys, Fred Winter and Josh Gifford, as well as many of the people who worked for him over many decades, must be a man more sinned against than sinful. 
I doubt if Captain Ryan Price much wanted a book written about him. My impression of him was that he was a quiet man with a loud, opinionated voice and he only consented to an authorised biography as it was to be penned by his friend Peter Bromley, the long-standing B.B.C. racing commentator. The book suffers because of this friendship as Bromley had no intention of upsetting his friend by offering the reader any snippets of criticism or elements of Price’s life that might have shown him in less than a rosy light.
The book was published in 1982, a date so far back in time that I was shocked by how long Price has been separated from the racing scene. To me, he remains relevant, a legend to always be remembered.
Of course, he is remembered, more so, I suspect, than for What A Myth’s Gold Cup or Kilmore’s Grand National success or his Group victories on the flat, for his dominance of the early years of the Schweppes Hurdle, the race that is now run under the title of the Tote, I believe. He won four out of the first five Schweppes Hurdles, in 1963, 64, 66 and 67, though people will only ever remember Rosyth in 64 and Hill House in 66.
Rosyth won the inaugural Schweppes in 1963, then run at Aintree and which attracted a field of 42, a number that had ‘accident’ written all over it. The accident happened to Stan Mellor, though good fortune ensured he survived the nasty fall with nothing more serious than a fractured jaw. It was, of course, the 1964 renewal that became part and parcel of British racing history.
Rosyth had run without catching the eye of the judge all season. To make matters worse he had been beaten by Salmon Spray on three occasions, first giving him weight and subsequently receiving weight. Price had the favourite Catapult, ridden by stable jockey Fred Winter, whilst the younger rider Josh Gifford ran the unfancied by the public Rosyth.
The stewards were not as impressed by the performance as the trainer and requested his presence in the stewards’ room. Rosyth had swept up the straight, virtually from last to first, beating Salmon Spray by 2-lengths. Also in Rosyth’s wake were Magic Court and Another Flash, the latter the Champion Hurdle winner of 1960 and the former in 1964. Salmon Spray was to win the Champion Hurdle in 1966. The stewards were firmly of the opinion that Rosyth had shown abnormal improvement and gave the impression they considered Ryan Price a shady individual. Three-weeks later Price found himself a disqualified person. My interpretation of events is that the Jockey Club were out to demonstrate their authority and thought Price a legitimate target. Nowadays Price would be congratulated on a brilliant display of training, running a horse on its merits through part of the season when the horse never thrived and bringing him to a peak on a day in the part of the season when he did thrive, the spring.
A man who survived the D-Day landings and the entire war is not a man you would expect to lie down and die and Price not only bounced back but both learned a lesson from the Rosyth case and came back stronger. The furore after Hill House’s 1966 Schweppes win threatened to end Price once and for all. Many loudly made their views plain – there was no place for cheats in racing. The stewards again considered that Hill House had shown ‘abnormal improvement’, which, I believe Ryan pointed out, was the job of a trainer, to find improvement in the horses put in his charge. The sticking point, and probably why the Jockey Club were threatening to take away his licence again was that someone close to Price had won a substantial amount of money on the race.
Hill House, as with Rosyth, had run all season on his merits, yet when the Jockey Club’s chief investigations officer relayed the news that Hill House had failed a dope test ironically it did not scupper Price’s chances of keeping his training licence but put him on the trail as to what was going on. It took a while but eventually Price and his team proved that Hill House was producing his own hydrocortisone and, I believe, no history of the sport should be written without chapter and verse on the ‘Hill House Affair’ as it highlights that there is no black and white where horses are concerned. I wonder how many trainers before or since lost their licences unfairly due to their charges also producing their own ‘dope’?
Ryan Price was one of the great dual-purpose trainers of all-time, even if he did not combine the two disciples. He was a man, I believed, who loved his horses more than he loved people and he is fondly remembered for his devotion to his retired heroes, many of which were cared-for well into their dotage. I think it is that aspect of the man that I respect so much. He was truly a horse-man.