Have you sometimes glanced down through the runners for a big race and thought how fitting it would be if such-and such were to win?
Of course you have no intention of following that silly sentiment with hard cash, content to dwell on the pleasant, if unlikely upshot.
Last week’s Hennessy Gold Cup was one of those rare instances.
Carruthers ran for John Oaksey, trained by his son-in-law Mark Bradstock and ridden by the irrepressible Mattie Bachelor.
He would probably try to make it all, only to be run out of it at the finish. Wish them luck and leave it to chance.
This time the daydream came true. Better still, the tension of looking in was precluded, by virtue of being in one of the few houses in Ireland that has no television set. Yes, there lives an artist in the depths of west Cork who survives happily meat-free, coffee-free and TV-free.
Hours later did the car radio disclose how Carruthers had made the running, apparently about to be swallowed up, only to fight back for one of the most popular Hennessy results since Arkle strutted his stuff all those years ago.
The emotion related to another Hennessy Gold Cup, all of 43 years hence, when the Hon John Lawrence – the only amateur in the field of 13 – brought Taxidermist from an apparently impossible position to pass the winning post together with Cheltenham Gold Cup heroine Kerstin, inseparable to the naked eye.
John did not believe he had won, his view shared by Stan Hayhurst on Kerstin, duly led into the winner’s enclosure. Photo finishes took much longer to determine in 1958. But when the judge eventually called it, he ruled in favour of Taxidermist and John Lawrence.
Already popular both as champion amateur and a crusading columnist, John Lawrence would endear himself to all followers of racing by his extraordinary Aintree experience in the 1963 Grand National.
Riding Carrickbeg, which he owned in partnership with trainer Gay Kindersley, John had the great race in his grasp, until mugged in the shadow of the winning post by teenager Pat Buckley on Ayala. Swallowing his disappointment, John promptly filed his account of that heartbreaking near miss over the telephone for the following day’s Sunday Telegraph. It remains one of the finest Grand National reports ever written.
For many years one of the Channel 4 racing team, gifted after-dinner speaker, pioneer and tireless face of the Injured Jockeys’ Fund, John Lawrence – subsequently Lord Trevethin and Oaksey – has deservedly become a ‘national treasure’ in his lifetime. That life began in 1929 and its durability is perhaps reflected by the names of those who also entered that winner’s enclosure – at Cheltenham in fact in those early Hennessy years – on Saturday, 15 November 1958.
Tim Brookshaw, champion in 1958-59, won the opener.
Tim’s appalling injuries at Aintree in 1964 triggered the Injured Jockeys’ Fund.
Born in the same year as John Oaksey, Tim died in 1981. Arthur Freeman, three years their senior, shared a double with trainer Peter Cazalet.
A skull fracture finished his riding career and Arthur trained for a while, dying in 1988. Corkborn Johnny ‘Tumper’ Lehane won the handicap hurdle on Robert’s First for local trainer Bill Marshall, who would subsequently write of Johnny.
“His great love for horses and his kindness and patience with diffi cult ones had to be seen to be believed. The most unmanageable became like lambs under his beautiful handling.” Sadly, Johnny Lehane’s life ended tragically in 1969, at only 34.
Happily, of those who rode at Cheltenham that day 43 years ago, Guy Harwood, Stan Hayhurst, Stan Mellor, Bill Rees, Willie Robinson and Michael Scudamore are still alive and well. John Oaksey’s fragile health precluded his presence at Newbury to cheer on his homebred Carruthers, but his wife Chicky, son Patrick and daughter Sarah proved able deputies.
Incidentally, Carruthers derives his name from one of his owner breeder’s favourite after-dinner anecdotes, as Brough Scott revealed. It concerns an embassy dinner party in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.
A British businessman is fondling the thigh of what he believes to be a Russian blonde at his side. As his hand advances the ‘husky blonde’ whispers in his ear: “I don’t mind you touching my thigh, old man, but when you get to the top it’s Carruthers of MI5.”
Philip Hobbs, who trained the second and third, captured the mood when offering his congratulations. “I don’t like being second, but that was the right result.”