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Books : Biography : Sport : Horse Racing
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Every sport has its unlikely legends. In horse racing, there is Northern Dancer.This is the fast-moving story of a horse that, against the odds, has had a massive influence on the sport of kings--both on and off the track. Northern Dancer's success on the racecourse was in itself a remarkable tale of triumph in adversity.
Although small in size, he turned out to be larger than life, proving the cynics totally wrong by winning the 1964 Kentucky Derby in the fastest time in history. It also represented a marvellous achievement for his famous owner E.P.Taylor, who showed that great horses could be born and bred in Canada. And, while far from being the best looking of thoroughbreds, the success story continued after Northern Dancer's racing days were over. He is one of the most successful thoroughbred sires in racing history, with his descendants including the brilliant Nijinsky.
Author Muriel Lennox gives a splendid, vivid account of Northern Dancer's life both on and off the racecourse, as well as providing an intriguing insight into the character of owner E.P.Taylor. Clearly somebody who has witnessed much of what she talks about at close hand, she intersperses her well-told story with shorter pieces which act as useful summaries. The middle of the book includes some superb equine pictures, some of them action shots made more dramatic by being in black and white. And towards the tail-end, there are the impressive details of Northern Dancer's probably unparalleled record as a sire which takes the reader cantering through to the finish.
This may be the story of a horse that raced three decades ago, but the legend is still alive today and that comes across in this book. Through his many, successful descendants, the legacy of Northern Dancer relentlessly gallops on.
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To use modern parlance, Jenny Pitman OBE faced a double whammy when she applied for her trainer's licence. First, she was an outsider to the world of racing; second, and more importantly, she was a woman in what was still very much a man's world. As she tells us in her frank and entertaining autobiography, simply titled Jenny Pitman, she overcame the first problem much easier than beating the second.Known throughout the equine world as the first woman of racing, Mrs Pitman--now Mrs Stait after marrying her long-time partner David Stait in early 1998--is still having to bang her head against the brick wall that is sex discrimination. She tells how, after entering a fitness regime at theb eginning of 1998 and looking and feeling better than she had for years, a male colleague asked whether or not her sex life had improved as she appeared so fit and healthy!
But racing has been Jenny Pitman's life and the book is a no-holds barred account of a truly remarkable career. After telling of her happy childhood as the middle child of seven spent on a Leicestershire farm run by her parents, she describes the happiness she felt at her teenage marriage to jockey Richard Pitman. That joy was to turn to tears 10 years later when her first husband, and father of Jenny's two boys Mark and Paul, twice walked out on her. However, the outwardly tough-as-teak Jenny gritted her teeth and got on with the job of training racehorses.
Jenny has achieved success in the world's toughest races and she fully describes the joy and heartbreak of landing two (it should have been three but Esha Ness's success came in the 1993 void race) Grand Nationals. Then there were the other Grand Nationals, the Scottish, Welsh and finally to complete the set, Irish versions of the event. In 1984 she became the only woman to train a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner and followed that up when the same horse, Burrough Hill Lad, became the first trained by a woman to land the coveted Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup. That was a record which stood until Venetia Williams took 1998's running.
It is a frank book which covers and fully explains her run-ins with officialdom, press and even jockeys. The lead-up to her spat with Jamie Osborne is fully explained, as are the reasons behind her famous letter to Aintree officials over the state of the ground at 1998's Grand National. All in all, an enjoyable and informative read in which Mrs Pitman, as usual, pulls no punches.
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High-profile sports stars choose to walk a fine line between nurturing the bloom of their celebrity, and exercising the talent that made them famous in the first place. Horseracing's most recognisable face, Frankie Dettori - TV quiz show star, pizza endorser, restaurateur and pal of Vinnie Jones - publicly remarked recently that he realised he had crossed that line when someone seriously asked him how long ago he retired from being a jockey. In some ways then, Frankie, is a timely reminder that not only is Dettori a hugely talented horseman who is most definitely still riding, he's arguably at his peak. At the time of writing the Italian has all-but landed his first jockeys' championship in ten years - after a frantic summer compared to his almost part-time campaigns of recent years - and is once again the best known AND the best. Thankfully while this `autobiography', written with journalist Jonathan Powell, is not shy of trumpeting Dettori's unique achievements, it embraces the darker side of the affable imp persona too. Forget the married-with-kids, polished performer who appears on TV now - young Frankie, by his own admission, was a tearaway, a night-club wolf, a drugs-dabbler who was perilously close to seeing his career go permanently off the rails. Even when he had established himself as champion jockey he recalls among other failings, behaving like 'a real bastard' to challenger, and one-time pal, Jason Weaver, when he feared his crown was under threat. It's far from the only time when we see behind the cheeky chappie mask. Whether by accident or design, Dettori is refreshingly candid when it comes to revealing faults. His somewhat traditional views on women, in particular, will rankle with some. As will the underlying tone - Frankie's very much the star of the show, on the racecourse and off, and it's not an altogether likeable trait. But that's exactly what makes this book so entertaining - did you really think winners were nice guys? --Alex Hankin
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High-profile sports stars choose to walk a fine line between nurturing the bloom of their celebrity, and exercising the talent that made them famous in the first place. Horseracing's most recognisable face, Frankie Dettori - TV quiz show star, pizza endorser, restaurateur and pal of Vinnie Jones - publicly remarked recently that he realised he had crossed that line when someone seriously asked him how long ago he retired from being a jockey. In some ways then, Frankie, is a timely reminder that not only is Dettori a hugely talented horseman who is most definitely still riding, he's arguably at his peak. At the time of writing the Italian has all-but landed his first jockeys' championship in ten years - after a frantic summer compared to his almost part-time campaigns of recent years - and is once again the best known AND the best. Thankfully while this `autobiography', written with journalist Jonathan Powell, is not shy of trumpeting Dettori's unique achievements, it embraces the darker side of the affable imp persona too. Forget the married-with-kids, polished performer who appears on TV now - young Frankie, by his own admission, was a tearaway, a night-club wolf, a drugs-dabbler who was perilously close to seeing his career go permanently off the rails. Even when he had established himself as champion jockey he recalls among other failings, behaving like 'a real bastard' to challenger, and one-time pal, Jason Weaver, when he feared his crown was under threat. It's far from the only time when we see behind the cheeky chappie mask. Whether by accident or design, Dettori is refreshingly candid when it comes to revealing faults. His somewhat traditional views on women, in particular, will rankle with some. As will the underlying tone - Frankie's very much the star of the show, on the racecourse and off, and it's not an altogether likeable trait. But that's exactly what makes this book so entertaining - did you really think winners were nice guys? --Alex Hankin
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