The Spotted Wonder

By The Tetrarch

If only they could talk? Now one of them does.
And not just any nag. THE TETRARCH was one of the Turfs greatest racehorses. The oddly marked colt is acknowledged as the fastest two-year-old ever to set hoof on an English racecourse. His freakish powers set him apart: he was a phenomenon.

Retired undefeated amid sensational circumstances, the charismatic grey proved an unenthusiastic stallion. Yet he fathered Classic winners and became champion sire, establishing dynasties that ensure his influence is felt to this day throughout the bloodstock world.
Only an elite few racehorses become public idols and earn themselves a nickname. This is the story of THE SPOTTED WONDER as he might tell it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496994851

Book preview

2014 The Tetrarch. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/16/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9484-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9483-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9485-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Thanks to Peter McCalmont; Harry McCalmont; Richard McCormick; Alan Grundy; and John O’Connor, Adrian Sherry and Aimee Grieve at Ballylinch.

Contents

Preface

1 Racing’s Biggest Certainty

2 Family

3 Epsom

4 Ascot

5 My Trainer

6 Sandown Park

7 Goodwood

8 My Jockey

9 Derby

10 Doncaster

11 Anguish

12 My Legacy

13 Post-Script

Appendix One

Appendix Two

Illustrations between Pages 52 and 63

The Gamble Landed

On the gallops with Dick aboard

Roi Herode

Vahren

‘Cub’ Kennedy

Fresh-faced subaltern Dermot McCalmont

Atty

Chattis Hill

Woodcote

Posing with Dick

Acquiring Spots?

Coventry Cakewalk

Customized racing plate

National Breeders – tardy start

National Breeders – tight finish

Posing with Steve up

Rous Memorial

Between Pages 106 and 117

Too fast for the photographer at Derby

Atty and the Captain – now sporting moustache!

Returning after another triumph

Champagne: Stornoway vanquished

Bob Sievier enjoys a ride!

So does the Captain!

‘Dead Cert’

Figure of Fun

King of Ballylinch

Showing off stallion box and covering shed

Threshold to a new home

Portrait by Lynwood Palmer

Portrait in Old Age by Nina Colmore

The Tetrarch Bell

The Silver Salver

Resting Place of a Phenomenon

PREFACE

For a time I was one of the best kept secrets in racing. For an even longer time I’ve been one of the best known horses in Turf history.

Few racehorses become as renowned or loved during their brief period in the public eye as to earn a nickname. This is especially so with Flat-racers, whose careers are considerably shorter than those who engage over jumps season upon season. We must look to foreign fields to discover sobriquets evoking such marriages of fame and adoration: in the United States, Exterminator was christened ‘Old Bones’; in Australia, ‘The Red Terror’ could only be Phar Lap.

A nickname is an achievement. It means people have taken you to their hearts: you’ve become a public idol. A mark has been made; not, it’s true, necessarily always of a positive kind. But it’s a coat of arms to wear with pride. And one not easily acquired.

Yet as soon as I appeared before the English public on 11 September 1912, I gained a nickname: ‘The Rocking Horse’. Within twelve months ridicule turned to adulation thanks to an undefeated streak of seven races won by blinding speed, and the derogatory reference to my distinctive blotchy grey markings had been changed to ‘The Spotted Wonder’.

Yes, I was that exceptional; that outstanding. In appearance and in ability. And through my children I established dynasties ensuring my name lived on.

My name? The Tetrarch. This is my story.

ONE

Racing’s Biggest Certainty

I suppose you’re dying to hear the inside story of the sensational performances I put up in private trials on the gallops before I caused another sensation on my public debut by securing a monumental betting coup. Well, be patient. I’ll reveal all, but you’ll have to wait a while because there are a few other things I must say first by way of introduction.

There’s no such thing as a certainty in a horse race. Even in a two-horse race. That doesn’t stop every punter searching for one. But when I made my racecourse debut in a Two-Year-Old Maiden Plate at Newmarket on Thursday, 17 April 1913 I was the biggest certainty known to the English Turf in the two hundred years of its existence. The overwhelming majority of the betting public was unaware of this. Some people, however, were ‘in-the-know’. How did they know?

Let me take you back to late 1912 and the Chattis Hill yard, outside Stockbridge in Hampshire, where I was trained by HS ‘Atty’ Persse. Christened Henry Seymour, he was known throughout racing as ‘Atty’. This odd nickname derived from infancy when ‘Henry’ became ‘Harry’ and ‘Harry’ turned into ‘Atty’ thanks to the childish corruption of a playmate. I dare say his disdain for casual familiarities would cause his brow to harden were I to address him as anything other than ‘Mr Persse’; but I feel we’ve come through so much together that I shall be forgiven for referring to him as ‘Atty’ from here on.

Atty’s mantra when it came to training young horses for the racecourse was simplicity itself. ‘If your two-year-old does not know his job well enough first time out, you do not know your job,’ he’d insist. ‘The word trainer means a man who can train his horse at home to produce its best form first time out on a racecourse.’ To anyone failing to spot the significance of this credo Atty would reply: ‘The one and only time to have a bet is first time out. They say you should never back a two-year-old first time out. But why give it an easy introduction, a confidence booster, only to get 6/4 to your money when it runs and wins second time up? To my mind, if a two-year-old is educated, there is no necessity for these easy preparatory races.’

I heard Atty expressing those sentiments on several occasions. Usually, either just before or after he’d watched one of his ‘trials’. A trial was the means by which a ‘certainty’ might be discovered.

Of course, we had no idea when a trial would be staged until the last moment because morning exercise always began the same. After being tacked-up, we’d start with numerous circles of the yard while the head lad scrutinized our every movement and checked with our lads as to whether we had eaten-up. Then we’d be trotted in front of Atty just to ensure we were sound before heading out in single file to the gallops. All this would consume a good forty-five minutes. Then the adrenaline began to course if you happened to be a young racehorse: a nice slow canter of four furlongs. Better still were the mornings when we were encouraged into what Atty called ‘a sharp canter’. To me, this seemed entirely natural; and I’d be eager to stretch my limbs and run even faster.

Well, Atty’s winter routine was to return to his native Ireland for three weeks before Christmas to indulge in a spot of hunting. Just before he left, however, he’d be unable to resist the temptation to let some of his yearlings participate in a short gallop over a couple of furlongs to see whether there was a gem hidden among them. The December of 1912 proved no exception: and I participated, ridden by the lad who looked after me, Dick McCormick.

Let me introduce you to Dick. He and I made a great team. We were both youngsters, eager to learn and keen to impress. He was an eighteen-year-old from Clonmahon, Summerhill, in County Meath. Like me, Dick was a natural. Well, he had to be: his father Mark was a legendary figure across hunting country in Meath, once even daring to jump the canal locks at Ferrans. Young Dick came from a family of cattle dealers and at the age of eleven was sent to the Franciscan Agricultural College at Mountbellew. But he never gained his certificate. He’d been head-hunted by Atty. Dick had followed the Meath and the Ward Union staghounds from the age of ten, and Atty couldn’t fail but be impressed with what he’d read in a report of one afternoon’s two and a half hour pursuit around Corbollis in January 1909 that ended in winter gloom. Only three starters kept up the chase from start to finish – and one of them was fourteen-year-old Dick McCormick, ‘a real chip off the old block’ as the local newspaper described him. The following January, Dick began a five-year apprenticeship with Atty. His consummate horsemanship over ditch and bank had marked him out as a rider to be trusted, and he was suitably rewarded with custody of Chattis Hill’s most promising recruit of 1912 – me. I only ever had two riders: one on the track and one on the gallops. Steve Donoghue rode me in all my races and formal trials. Although Atty could call upon four capable apprentices, including a budding star in the sixteen-year-old Michael Beary, only Dick McCormick was entrusted with riding me at home. He was, according to Steve, ‘the only other person ever to sit on The Tetrarch’s back long enough to stay there. Even a fine horseman like Michael Beary was thrown.’

Anyway, Dick and I won that little sprint so easily that I swear I saw Atty walk off with a broad smile on his face. One could almost scent the aroma of a plot already swirling around his brain.

Trainers are always formulating strategies and professing to secrets, but I’d heard Atty say that the great thing in training us youngsters was to preserve our speed. Someone once asked him what he thought was the primary asset of a racehorse. He answered: ‘Speed.’ Pressed for further attributes, Atty said: ‘More speed.’ Anything else? ‘Still more speed!’ boomed Atty. He believed a horse either was or was not born with the quality of speed: it could not be acquired. The art of the trainer was to develop what speed there was in each of us. So, it was obvious he’d not want our natural speed blunted by overworking us at home. Atty told people I was a ‘glutton for work’ but he had to conserve an edge for the racecourse. We were allowed to do just enough to satisfy our natural instincts and keep us happy.

In a formal trial, however, we ran as near to racetrack conditions as possible in order to provide Atty with the information he wanted. Or, as he put it more cryptically: ‘A trial never produces a certainty, though an approximation to the truth may be reached with a certain amount of accuracy. Yet sometimes I have contrived to veil the form of a good horse until the hour was ripe to reveal it to the world.’

In other words: if a trial threw up a ‘good thing’ he’d make damn sure nobody got wind of it until a gamble had been landed. Let me quickly tell you the story of Sir Archibald to demonstrate how Atty knew he’d unearthed a gold mine when I appeared.

Sir Archibald was a two-year-old in 1907. Atty had a reliable workhorse on the gallops in the three-year-old filly Benicia, and he reckoned if any two-year-old could keep up with the older horse at weight-for-age over four furlongs it would be a betting proposition. At this early stage of the season Benicia ought to have been conceding 32lb to Sir Archibald on the weight-for-age scale used throughout racing to compensate for the physical immaturity of the younger horse – in effect to bring about a dead heat. Atty sought the advice of Mr McCreery, one of his most experienced owners. He suggested reducing the difference to 21lb to see how close the disadvantaged Sir Archibald might get to the older horse. However, Atty wanted to ascertain just how good Sir Archibald might be. So he said: ‘We’ll try him at levels.’

Sir Archibald won the trial with ease. This meant he was 32lb or more superior to Benicia. And that amounted to more than ten lengths. Talk of pounds and lengths may seem mumbo-jumbo to the uninitiated but racing folk lived, or should I say betted, on the basis of the formula that, in this instance, says 3lb equals one length over sprint distances. Consequently, an almighty coup might be organized when Sir Archibald made his debut. ‘Avoid gambling like the devil, for the devil is in it,’ Atty once warned those less shrewd than he. ‘However good your horse, don’t put your shirt on him, or you may shiver all next winter!’

I’ve no idea whether Atty put his ‘shirt’ on Sir Archibald in the race chosen for the coup of 1907, but if he did there was no chance of him catching a chill as a consequence. The race selected was a maiden at Newmarket, some eight weeks into the season. No one suspected a thing. The owner of Sir Archibald was not known as a bettor; Atty engaged a relatively low profile jockey (the American Lucien Lyne – who later proved to be anything other than moderate); and, of course, Atty himself had only recently arrived from Ireland with next to no reputation as a trainer. There were twenty-nine runners and in the betting ring all the money was plunging on a scalding-hot favourite called Mocassin, on whom, it was stated with authority, the stable had wagered £5,000. However, the plans to foil its gamble had already been put into effect: Atty had arranged for telegrams to be sent from small post offices in the north to bookmakers shortly before the ‘off’. Naturally, these didn’t reach the bookmakers until after the race was over. But by then Sir Archibald had made every yard of the running to beat Mocassin by a length and a half at a starting price of 20/1. The stable commission had totalled £1,000 – some of which went on at odds of 90/1. ‘They didn’t all pay up,’ said Atty, ‘but we finished with about 16/1 to our money. Not too bad. One starting-price bookmaker never spoke to me again!’

Sir Archibald’s subsequent career underlined how that maiden was a licence to coin money. He started a 2/1 favourite for his next race. That it was the New Stakes at Ascot and not a lowly maiden race made no difference. Sir Archibald trotted up once more, proving what a cast-iron certainty he was at Newmarket – if one happened to possess inside knowledge. Then he added a third prestigious event, the Chesterfield Stakes at Newmarket, and was placed in his two other starts, both high-class events. The following year Sir Archibald ran second in the Two Thousand Guineas. And as a four-year-old he added the Victoria Cup and Ascot’s Rous Memorial Stakes to his curriculum vitae.

So, that’s how to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Victorian trainers made the maximum use of trials, and Atty wasn’t the only one who still swore by them. As you may gather, the key factor in any trial was the weights carried, and often Atty would be the only person who knew what they were. Woe betide any lad riding in a trial who was caught in the act of trying to sway the evidence for his own ends by putting some extra lead in his pockets. It was always on the cards that I’d be similarly tested when the right time arose. I couldn’t wait to demonstrate my ability. We youngsters were dying to be let off the leash. Atty recognized this and knew the result of a trial would consequently hold merit.

But my first trial took everyone by surprise, Atty included. You see, it was just an afterthought on Atty’s part. After the Christmas break our work load increased: as Atty was wont to say, ‘We steal them into their fast work’. The latter came on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This is when we were allowed to run like the racehorses we were bred to be. On Tuesdays, Atty made us run at a good ‘three-parts speed’ for three or four furlongs; on Thursdays we’d go a bit steadier – which was somewhat frustrating for those of us who were itching to race each other for real. But because I seemed such an overgrown specimen he reckoned I’d be a slow developer and not as forward as other more precocious juveniles in the yard. Big, powerful youngsters like me usually take a tremendous amount of time to mature. So I wasn’t even meant to be part of the trial. Atty didn’t believe I was ready. My education wasn’t quite over. But I knew otherwise. I was desperate to run flat out. I was a natural and needed no teaching.

It was the Thursday, 3 April. The trial involved a quartet of speedy two-year-olds Atty was preparing to race in the near future and an old horse who was giving the pair 21lb. At the last moment Atty looked across toward me and Dick and shouts: ‘McCormick! Follow them up! If they leave him don’t move on him. Just let him drop out.’

This was the first occasion I’d been asked to run from virtually a standing start, to ‘jump off’ as it was called. I accomplished this novelty like an old hand. We couldn’t have gone more than a couple of furlongs before I lost sight of the others. And I hadn’t over-exerted myself. It seemed to me I was travelling at nothing more than a decent canter. Apparently, the boys on the horses chasing me were scrubbing along; I could hear them hollering for their lives above the clumf-clumf of my hooves skimming the grass! I was ten lengths clear. Yet I was cruising. And Dick was sitting as motionless as a sloth.

This was an eye-opener for Atty. He must’ve wondered what manner of machine he had at his disposal. Afterwards he called it ‘the most exciting trial I have seen’. Had I pinched a head start? Had something gone amiss with the others? He could never hope to notice everything that happened in a trial. And boy riders couldn’t be trusted to confess to any error on their part that cost their mount dear when it was likely to cost them dearer still once Atty was informed.

Atty wasn’t the only observer impressed that morning. He’d a guest from Ireland with him, James J Maher the noted bloodstock breeder, trainer and owner whose steeplechasers Atty once used to ride. Returning to the yard, I overheard Maher whisper: ‘I don’t want to know anything, but I saw a grey horse today with white spots on him, and when that gentleman runs, will you put me on a fiver?’

At any rate, Atty was anxious to find out the veracity of my impromptu trial. Two days later, on the Saturday, 5 April, he arranged a formal trial, and put stable jockey Steve Donoghue aboard me for the first time. Atty could never be totally confident in a boy’s ability to debrief him accurately, or honestly, after a trial – they’ve so little experience. He needed the opinion of a top jockey used to riding top horses. And, of even greater import, for the trial horses he needed reliable yardsticks.

Every top Flat-racing stable possesses its yardstick, ‘tackle’ as some call it, an older horse that holds its form year after year, one guaranteed to reproduce that form at home on the gallops and one that consequently becomes worth its weight in oats as a trial animal against whom others may be measured. Often it’s the reason why he or she is kept in training. Chattis Hill’s ‘Mister Reliable’ was the seven-year-old Captain Symons, in the same ownership as me, who’d won a couple of races but really paid his keep on the trial ground. In April the weight-for-age scale stated he should be giving a two-year-old like me every ounce of 3st 5lb. Atty’s customary test for his decent two-year-olds was a 21lb allowance instead of the 47lb. If they got near the Captain’s tail that was invariably sufficient to tell Atty he’d something with which to wage war against the bookmakers. But Atty remembered the excellent Sir Archibald and hoped in me he might’ve discovered another: so he allowed Captain Symons to give me precisely nothing. We both carried 8st 7lb. There were two others in the trial: a three-year-old called Lilly Baker