Movers, shakers, epoch-makers; JOHN RANDALL ON THE 100 MAKERS OF 20th-CENTURY RACING PART TWO: 40-31.
In the second of a five-part series which identifies the 100 people and horses who have most influenced British racing since 1900, today those ranked from 40 to 31 are assessed40. LORD WIGG
1900-83 Administrator
A former Labour government minister, George Wigg was the most dynamic and abrasive figure in British racing during his term as chairman of the Levy Board (1967-72) and did much to maximise the sport's revenue from the levy.
A blunt and combative man who had a stormy relationship with the Jockey Club, he increased the levy by getting bookmakers' payments based on turnover rather than profits and by establishing criteria for the fixture list which maximised that turnover.
Wigg also promoted racecourse security and stable lads' welfare. Under his chairmanship, the Levy Board safeguarded the future of Epsom as a training centre by leasing the main gallops there from Stanley Wootton and it also bought United Racecourses, the owner of Epsom, Sandown and (later) Kempton, thus ensuring their preservation for racing.
Phil Bull once said: "George Wigg's arrival at the Levy Board was the best thing to happen to racing in my lifetime."
Lord Wyatt wrote: "Though Wigg maintained deep dislikes, rising to hatreds, he was intensely loyal to his friends . . . He employed either considerable charm or hectoring hostility to match his mood or the requirement of the occasion."
39. DICK WHITFORD
Handicapper
The father of modern handicapping, Dick Whitford turned his craft from an art into a science and, through Timeform ratings, became the first man to compile a universal handicap.
He went to work after the war for Phil Bull, who was already a successful punter, writer and publisher. Bull (time) and Whitford (form) combined their unique talents to produce Timeform, with the organisation's ratings soon becoming widely accepted as the most authoritative measure of thoroughbred performance.
The first Timeform annual (for 1947) contained the first universal handicap, in which Whitford allotted every Flat horse in Britain a number (a Timeform rating) expressing its racing merit in pounds, calculated on an unvarying scale so that horses of different eras could be compared. Many other ratings systems, both official and unofficial, have been devised since then, and nearly all have used the Timeform scale as their model.
Whitford, dissatisfied with his financial reward, split with Bull in 1949 and later became a racing manager, private handicapper and tipster. He once said: "Horses are amazing creatures. When they're right, they run as accurately as little Swiss watches."
38. SADLER'S WELLS
b.1981 Sire
Sadler's Wells was a top-class racehorse who has become outstandingly the best sire of modern times in Europe, the most reliable source of equine excellence for breeders.
Bred (in America) and owned by the Robert Sangster-John Magnier-Vincent O'Brien syndicate, the son of Northern Dancer won six of his 11 races, including the Irish 2,000 Guineas, Eclipse and Irish Champion Stakes, before being retired to Coolmore Stud, where he has consistently covered large books of top-quality mares.
He has delivered the goods by being champion sire seven times and runner-up twice in the nine seasons since his first crop (which included Old Vic and In The Wings) became three-year-olds. Among his subsequent champions have been King George heroes Opera House and King's Theatre, Arc victor Carnegie, Oaks winners Salsabil and Intrepidity, and Barathea.
Tony Morris says: "If the sires' list is the criterion of success, Sadler's Wells has dominated his contemporaries more than any other stallion in Europe since St Simon. He is the one by which all other stallions of his era are measured, and will be measured for years to come."
37. GEORGE DULLER
1892-1962 Jockey
The greatest specialist hurdles jockey of all time, George Duller revolutionised race-riding over jumps by popularising the forward crouch seat which had been adopted by Flat jockeys at the turn of the century, thus rendering obsolete the traditional hunting style.
In contrast to his colleagues, who rode with long stirrups and sat back in the saddle over the obstacles, he rode short and did not shift his streamlined forward seat, so that his mounts landed running. He was also a superb judge of pace and a master of waiting in front.
Champion jump jockey in 1918, Duller rarely rode over fences but won seven renewals of the Imperial Cup, which was then the most important hurdle race of the season, three of them on Trespasser (1920-22), and he also won the inaugural Champion Hurdle on Blaris in 1927. He later trained at Epsom.
Racing was merely one aspect of his love of speed, as he was also an expert pilot and motor-racing driver.
One weighing-room colleague wrote: "He had a tremendously strong seat and, no matter how hard his horse hit a hurdle, he never budged an inch in the saddle."
36. SIR CECIL BLACKER
b.1916 Administrator
A career soldier who rose to the rank of general, Sir Cecil Blacker represented Britain at both modern pentathlon and show-jumping, became a successful amateur rider, and was the man most responsible for the introduction of all-weather racing.
In 1985 there was official concern about the loss of revenue due to cancelled meetings during the winter, so Blacker, the deputy senior steward of the Jockey Club, chaired a working party to investigate the feasibility of installing an all-weather racing surface.
His report the following year was positive, though many professionals were opposed to the idea and he wrote in his memoirs: "Never has the instinctive conservatism of the British racehorse trainer been more in evidence and, it often seemed, the younger and more promising the trainer the more reactionary he or she was."
All-weather racing in Britain started in 1989, enabling the sport to take place throughout the year and thus boosting the betting levy considerably.
In a further Jockey Club report, 'Monkey' Blacker sparked the campaign for Sunday racing with betting, though that innovation had to wait until the advent of the BHB before Parliament approved it.
35. EDDIE TAYLOR
1901-89 Breeder
In the two decades up to his death, the Canadian brewery tycoon Edward Plunket Taylor was the world's leading breeder, thanks largely to Northern Dancer, the most influential sire of modern times, whom he bred and owned.
The dominant figure in Canadian racing from the 1940s, he owed much of his success to his purchase at Newmarket sales in 1952 of Lady Angela, who became the dam of Nearctic, the sire of Northern Dancer. That colt won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes in 1964 before changing the face of thoroughbred breeding.
Taylor himself bred Northern Dancer's three Derby winners-Triple Crown hero Nijinsky, The Minstrel and Secreto-and many more of his European-raced sons including Northern Taste, Storm Bird, Shareef Dancer and El Gran Senor.
In North America the products of his Windfields Farms in Ontario and Maryland made him the leading breeder 19 times (in races won) in 26 years, and nine times (in money won) in 12 years up to 1985.
Tony Morris wrote in the Racing Post that Taylor left "a legacy of influence which will be recognised for as long as Man finds amusement in racing horses."
34. BOB GREEN
b.1941 Entrepreneur
Bob Green was the most effective and dynamic leader the bookmaking industry has ever had, and his brainchild, the satellite channel SIS, has brought regular live televised action into betting shops and boosted racing's finances significantly.
Green, as managing director and chairman of Mecca Bookmakers in the 1980s, was aware that new technology could improve the quality of service to his customers and he became the driving force behind a consortium of the big bookmakers which in 1986 won a contract with the Racecourse Association to televise racing daily via satellite into betting shops.
Satellite Information Services first broadcast in May 1987 and most betting shops in Britain were tuned in by the time Green left Mecca/William Hill to pursue business interests in America in 1989.
SIS has been the biggest single factor in increasing betting turnover since the levy started and has also improved the finances of individual racecourses.
One of Green's hobbies is writing poetry and fiction; when asked if he would rather write a good book than be a successful tycoon, he replied: "Absolutely no contest. Anybody can run a big business."
33. STEVE DONOGHUE
1884-1945 Jockey
The common racecourse cry of "Come on, Steve" testified to Steve Donoghue's status as Britain's greatest sporting idol of the 1920s and, together with Sir Gordon Richards and Lester Piggott, he was one of the three greatest British-born Flat jockeys of the century.
Having started his career in France and Ireland, he returned to Britain and became champion 10 consecutive times from 1914. He rode six Derby winners (only Piggott has ridden more) including, uniquely, three in a row from 1921.
His first two Derby winners were Triple Crown heroes Pommern (1915) and Gay Crusader (1917), whom he described as his greatest champion, and he also struck up famous partnerships with The Tetrarch and Brown Jack. After his retirement in 1937 he trained, with little success.
Donoghue was thoughtless and irresponsible, though his charm saved him from many awkward situations. His colleague Jack Leach wrote of how they were about to dine at the Savoy and "Steve was called to the telephone. As he left the table he said, 'I'll be back in a minute.' I next saw him ten days later in Manchester."
32. GOLDEN MILLER
1927-57 Racehorse
Golden Miller is the only horse to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National in the same year, and the only one to win the Gold Cup five times.
Bred in Ireland, he was still only a five-year-old when winning his first Gold Cup in 1932, but his reputation rests largely on his unique big-race double in 1934. In the Grand National he carried 12st 2lb and won decisively in a then record time, though he later developed an aversion to the big Aintree fences.
For most of his career he had an eccentric owner, Dorothy Paget, an inexperienced trainer, Basil Briscoe, and frequent changes of jockey. Yet this quick and economical jumper won 25 of his 43 races over fences and became such a public hero that, in the words of journalist Sidney Galtrey, he was "a god on four legs".
Among the great steeplechasers Golden Miller is unsurpassed for soundness and durability, and though the Gold Cup was not a championship race in his day and he never achieved the same degree of superiority over his contemporaries as Arkle, he did more than any other individual to raise the status of National Hunt racing between the wars.
31. JOE McGRATH
1887-1966 Entrepreneur
Joe McGrath did much to erode the supremacy of British racing by raising the status of Irish racing, in particular the Irish Derby, to top international level, and he also sold the epoch-making stallion Nasrullah to America.
A former republican gunman, McGrath was prominent in business and politics in Ireland, and co-founded the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes. He was instrumental in that national institution becoming the sponsor of the Irish Derby in 1962, boosting its value dramatically so that it became a race of international importance for the first time, rivalling the Derby itself.
He had already put Irish racing on the map as an owner-breeder, notably via his 1951 Derby winner Arctic Prince, but in 1950 he did a grave disservice to European breeding by selling the great sire Nasrullah, then standing at his Brownstown Stud, to an American syndicate headed by Bull Hancock.
He was the Napoleon of the Irish Turf, and historian John Welcome wrote: "Joe McGrath was a dynamic personality, a masterly administrator endowed with an immense capacity for sustained hard work, and his industry and energy drove him to the top in all he did."
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| Title Annotation: | Sports |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Racing Post (London, England) |
| Date: | Aug 9, 1999 |
| Words: | 1968 |
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