Frankel. Simon CooperЧитать онлайн книгу.
quality racing. It was one of those humdrum, unregarded workaday fixtures which are the bread and butter of horse racing around the globe – excepting one horse.
You probably didn’t bother to go to the paddock after the second race to watch the horses parade for the next; few did. What was meant to be a balmy summer evening had turned cold with squally-soon-to-become-heavy rain. Trainers, jockeys, stable hands and officials were all scurrying around truncating the preliminaries to the shortest possible duration. The lawns in front of the stands were pretty well deserted; the crowds were jammed inside. A few hardy types sheltered under umbrellas to be close to the horses, but in truth they were few and far between. After all, this was just a minor race with a dozen horses, eight of which had never raced before and the remaining four had hardly set the world alight, without a win between them.
For our horse, this was to be his racecourse debut; he was one of that eight. But was he the special one? Maybe. There was a buzz about him. He’d lit up the training gallops. Been the gossip of this racing town. He’d been named in honour of one of the greatest trainers of modern times. Expectations were high. A sick man, his trainer, was being rejuvenated just by his very being. But this was a wretched night; his stable hand had even lost his shoe in the quagmire leading up to the start. If it all went wrong, there were at least excuses to hand.
By the time you’d extracted yourself from the bar, placed a bet and found a vantage point in the stands, the horses would have been long gone, gathered at the start a mile away. Without high-powered binoculars they would have been nothing more than a wet smudge on the otherwise empty horizon of Newmarket Heath that doubles as a racecourse. With binoculars you’d have seen jockeys hating the rain, crouched over their horses, keeping them calm with a circling routine. Had you been at the start, you would have heard the starter’s assistant complete the roll call as the handlers stepped forward to lead each horse in turn into the designated compartment of the starting stalls. A moment later, the loading complete, the gates of the stalls would spring open. The race was on.
Did our horse lead from pillar to post, leaving all others struggling in his wake, the rain-sodden crowd gasping in awe at his performance? I’d like to tell you yes, but it wasn’t really that way. In a race that lasts less than two minutes – this was just a mile – a quick getaway helps. But our young blood blew it. Months of training counted for nothing as this critical moment vanished in a trice. He was closer to last than first with half the race run. Had you placed a bet on him – he was the favourite, after all – you might have had reason to worry. But really you need not have done. Our horse was a cut above the rest. He knew it. And you, too, would know it soon.
He had been trained to run this way. He was headstrong. A horse who knew his mind but was prone to run too fast, too soon. His trainer, the best of the best, saw this in him so taught him the value of patience. The waiting game. Cruising behind the others until the moment was right. And that is how this race has become a part of horse-racing history.
In the wet gloom, as the track rose towards the finishing line, the jockey eased our horse out from behind the pack to make his run. There was nothing hurried. Really, there was nothing to doubt. He drew level with the leaders, kept time with them for a few strides as if to make some point before pulling away with ease as the winning post flashed by. Whether you were a seasoned racing professional or a once-a-year punter, our horse would have caught the eye. ‘Impressive’, you’d have said. ‘Very impressive.’ And you’d have logged the name of our horse in that part of your brain reserved for something out of the ordinary.
One hundred and three seconds on from the start, the horse drawn in stall ten had passed the winning post ahead of the rest. That was to become something of a habit as Frankel was now, despite the apparent inauspiciousness of the occasion, on his way to becoming the greatest racehorse to ever live.
1
Yesterday I met Frankel who crept up on me all of a sudden. One moment I was deep in conversation and the next I sensed a presence behind me. Maybe someone said something along the lines of ‘here’s the man’. In truth, I don’t recall precisely but when I turned around there he was: the greatest racehorse that has ever strode out on God’s turf.
As I wended my way across the Cambridge fens, which in turn gave way to the ordered horse paddocks that surround Newmarket, I tried not to elevate this meeting to something of a semi-religious experience. An audience with the Pope. A pilgrimage to a Tibetan mountaintop to meet the Dalai Lama. It seemed the wrong side of sane to equate a horse on such a level.
And indeed that is true. But rarely in life does one ever get to meet the truly great. They are the stuff of legends. Stories passed down through generations. The prism of time only giving us a hint of what the truth may have been. But here was I doing that very thing. A chance to look, see and touch. Make a judgement all of my own. To burn into my memory a horse that will likely never, ever exist again.
You’d barely give Frankel’s home a second glance if you drove past. Yes, the sweeping turn to the entrance looks immaculate, but the redbrick walls are low and the signs discreet. Beyond the gates that swing open to acknowledge your arrival, the scene that greets you appears to be anything other than a horse stud farm.
The smooth tarmac gives way to immaculately raked gravel that scrunches under my tyres. In the absence of signs, a kindly gardener points me in the right direction, curving me around the tall copper beech that was hiding the offices. Well, these are not offices in the absolute sense of the word, but rather the most magnificent country house, known as Banstead Manor Stud, that people just happen to work in. It is the European headquarters of the world-famous racing and breeding operation, Juddmonte, owned by His Highness Prince Khalid bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman Al Saud, known universally across racing as Mr Khalid Abdullah, befitting his privacy and pursuit of excellence. I honestly don’t know if Juddmonte’s Banstead Manor was designed by the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, but it has all the heritage. Long, horizontal, thin red bricks delineated by perfectly trowelled lime mortar. Tall, slender chimneys, artworks in their own right. Narrow windows that mimic the first Elizabethan age. I’m ushered into a rather grand room which is full of Frankel memorabilia; even the mints are wrapped in his racing colours. Among the paintings and prints is a faded handwritten letter from a son to his mother in old-fashioned copperplate script. It seems Frankel is not the only one to achieve world fame to have lived at Banstead Manor; this was the childhood home of Winston Churchill.
I’m met by Shane Horan who is introduced to me with a job title I’ve never heard spoken of before, but that speaks more to my ignorance in these matters than the title itself: Nominations Manager. He is, it transpires, responsible for which mares are chosen each season (requests to mate with Frankel are significantly oversubscribed). We sit down in what I guess would once have been the drawing room, with furniture as comfortable today as it would have been back when this was a grand home. Reclining on the sofa, I have a glorious view across a York stone terrace, striped lawns, and between the house and yet another copper beech, a statue of a full-sized horse on a Portland stone plinth. I hazard a guess that it might just be Frankel. I am correct.
I pull out my pad and start to ask Shane a few questions, but we both know that really I am being polite. Seeing Frankel is the thing. The answers will come later. We are just playing for time. Soon Shane looks at his watch, stands up, and beckons me to follow. ‘We’ll just catch him on the way back.’ It is shortly before 3 pm but I’m none the wiser as to where Frankel has been or where he is going. I don’t like to ask, as the assumption seems to be that I should know.
My other assumption was that I’ll need a pair of wellington boots to tramp around, or at least make my way to the stud yard. Shane gives me a quizzical look when I ask whether I should change footwear. I’ll take that as a no. The walk to the stables is both short and perfection. Another striped lawn gently slopes away from the house. A small lake gurgles as a pulsing fountain spouts water.