Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings

There was now only one thing Robert wanted in this life. He wanted to buy a racehorse. And the racehorse he wanted to buy was Chalk Stream.

Quite frankly, Nick was flabbergasted. But Robert did not habitually make jests about matters like £1000, the sum he was offering. Nick knew his grandfather had paid only 620 guineas for Chalk Stream’s dam, Sabie River, and he set about trying to get the horse for racing’s brand new devotee. There were many conferences between Sir Foster and his trainer Arthur Budgett, but after several weeks of negotiation they agreed to sell. Robert gave the son of the stallion Midas to Christine as a wedding present. Chalk Stream would henceforth be campaigned in the colours of Mrs Robert Sangster.

The first thing Robert needed was a trainer and he wanted one close to Chester so that he and Christine could visit the horse. He chose the thirty-nine-year-old Eric Cousins, a rather dashing ex-RAF pilot who had ridden fifty winners as an amateur over the jumps. He was a top-class horseman, a keen fox-hunter and had won the great long-distance handicap, the Ascot Stakes, at the Royal Meeting in 1957, just three years after taking out his licence to train. Better yet, he was developing a burgeoning reputation for his ability to place highly trained horses into exactly the right spot on the handicap. He had just moved his horses from Rangemore, near Burton-on-Trent, right into the heart of Cheshire, at Sandy Brow Stables, outside the country town of Tarporley, less than an hour’s drive from the Wirral.

Chalk Stream journeyed north from the historic Budgett stables of Whatcombe in Berkshire and met his new trainer. He was already fit and sharp, but Cousins set about trying to improve him. He ran him often and the horse showed courage running into the first four on four occasions and then winning, on one glorious afternoon at Haydock Park, eleven miles out of Liverpool. It was a little handicap named after the nearby village of Hermitage Green, but Chalk Stream won it by two lengths at 3–1. Robert and Christine and all of the entourage, including, of course, a massively relieved Nick Robinson, had the most wonderful celebration.

Then Cousins worked the magic again, sending Chalk Stream to victory at the old Manchester Racecourse in early October. It was quite a competitive little contest, its prize money sponsored by a local dog-food firm, and afterwards Eric Cousins announced that he would now prepare Chalk Stream for a shot at a big race, the Liverpool Autumn Cup, to be run on the flat at Aintree, almost opposite the Vernons Pools offices, on a Friday afternoon in the dying days of the flat race season, 4 November. The prize money was about £1000 to the winning owner.

Robert had rarely known such overpowering elation (not since Tiny hit the deck, anyway) as he experienced in the days leading up to that great North Country handicap. Just to have a chance. Just to be in there with a horse. To be at the local racecourse with all of his friends. What a day it was going to be.

The weights were announced. Chalk Stream was in with seven stone two pounds. ‘Is that good?’ asked Robert. ‘That’s very adequate,’ replied Cousins, which Robert took to mean: ‘We’re in with a real shout here.’ He proceeded to have what was the biggest bet of his life, £100 on the nose. Chalk Stream to win. ‘I’ll take 9–1.’ They all went in, some of them with ten bob, Nick with £25.

As the field of eleven went down to post on a cool, windy afternoon at Aintree, Robert and his men gathered in the owners’ little stand with a good view down the course. Eric Cousins had decided the horse was better over distances of beyond the mile of the Lincoln, and today’s test would be over an extended ten furlongs. The trainer mentioned to Robert before they went off that the start was the problem. Chalk Stream hated ‘jumping off’ and was apt to ‘dwell’ making up his mind whether to run. This split-second indecision had cost him his chance in the Lincoln, but today Eric Cousins fervently hoped he would break fast with the rest of the field.

But this time luck was against him. They came under starter’s orders in a good line, but as the tapes flew up, only ten horses rushed forward. Chalk Stream had done it again. Eric Cousins’s whispered oath was not heard by Mrs Sangster, but they all saw Chalk Stream hesitate and finally break several lengths behind the field. ‘Is he out of it?’ asked Robert. ‘Not yet,’ replied his trainer, but the field was racing towards the home turn with Chalk Stream very definitely last with a great deal of ground to make up. His rider, the five-pound-claiming apprentice Brian Lee, was sitting very still and then, halfway round the turn Chalk Stream began to improve. The commentator was calling out the leaders, ‘Royal Chief, Windy Edge, Laird of Montrose, Tompion, the favourite Chino improving …’

Chalk Stream was in the middle of the pack as they came off the turn. Lee switched him off the rails and the big gelding set off gamely down the outside. They hit the two-furlong pole. Chino struck the front, chased hard by Chalk Stream still with two lengths to find. The Liverpool crowd roared as Lee went to the whip and Chalk Stream quickened again. As they hit the furlong pole he burst clear of the field and then drew right away to win by three lengths from Tompion, with Chino the same distance back in third. Robert Edmund Sangster nearly died of excitement. Forget Tiny, this was the biggest moment of his life. To this day he says, ‘I will never forget the Liverpool Autumn Cup. Not if I live for a hundred years.’

Robert ordered the finest champagne for the celebration. Dinner went on into the small hours. ‘I wish’, he told his friends late that night, ‘that this day would never end.’ And in a sense, it never did. Robert Sangster had taken the very first steps towards becoming, one day, the most powerful owner and breeder of thoroughbred horses in the entire two-hundred-year modern history of the Sport of Kings.

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A Glimpse of the Green (#ulink_a92125f4-3695-5933-b3e1-4dd676e7e24a)

Robert Sangster learned, before the 1961 racing season even opened, what it was like to be hit hard by the Jockey Club handicapper. For the Liverpool Spring Cup, Chalk Stream was put up nine pounds in the weights. In addition, on the day of the race, he behaved very mulishly at the start, finally condescended to run, and trailed in ninth of thirteen. Fortunately Eric Cousins, liking neither the weights nor Chalk Stream’s general attitude, had told Robert on no account to have a bet. The weight was a problem, but the real trouble was in Chalk Stream’s mind. In Cousins’s opinion he may have been one of those horses which carry for a long time bad memories of a race. They remember the whip and the aching that all athletes experience in the final stages of a hard struggle. Chalk Stream had had a tough one at Liverpool in November and he did not really want to line up at the start ever again.

But he had an easy time in the Spring Cup – the jockey did not drive him out when defeat was inevitable – and Eric again tested him in mid April, and he finished second at Wolverhampton coming with a strong, steady run from two furlongs out. Again it was a not hard race, nothing like the great battle he had fought in November, coming from far back to victory when the money was down. Eric Cousins decided the time was right to bring Chalk Stream to a fever pitch of fitness and send him out to try and win the Great Jubilee Handicap worth nearly £3000 (probably £30,000 in today’s currency) on the fast, flat course of Kempton Park to the south-west of London.

Naturally Robert and his team, who would be making the two-hundred-mile journey south for the race, wanted to know two things: was he going to run well, and did they have a bet. For once Eric Cousins was cautious. He told Robert very carefully, ‘In a handicap like this he cannot afford to throw it away at the start. If he is difficult and gives them an eight- or ten-length lead before they start, he will not win. But we are in with only seven stone five, and if he runs like he did at Liverpool he might just make it.’

The situation was not only forked, it was double-edged. To bet or not to bet? Chalk Stream’s two defeats in 1961 had got four pounds off his back, his apprentice jockey would claim three more. But this race would sway with the weights. Chalk Stream must carry three more pounds than he did when he last won. That three extra represented one and a half lengths – the distance that separated the first four in last year’s Lincoln. Could Chalk Stream deliver again? Would he break fast at the start? Would Robert dare to go in with another £100 bet? The conundrum preoccupied Robert almost to the exclusion of all else. He loved the academic aspect of this sport, measuring risk against hard cash. Trying to make a sound decision without giving away £100 to Major Ronnie Upex, the rails layer for the big bookmakers Heathorns with whom Robert had a fluctuating credit account.

Robert did not just like the world of racing, he was rapidly becoming addicted to it. He and Eric Cousins would sit for hours over at the Tarporley stables discussing their problems over a few glasses of champagne. Finally, one evening, Eric came up with a master plan, based on the fact that Robert would not put the money down until they knew the horse was racing with the rest of them. It would take split-second timing, but it was possible, of that Eric had no doubt.

On the day of the race, the scrum of the Birkenhead Park second team was sorely depleted, as its tight-head prop forward headed for the owners’ stand at Kempton Park. Two other members of the pack were also going to be at Kempton and there was an atmosphere of tense excitement as Robert and Christine flew down the old A34 road towards Oxford in that 100mph Mercedes sports car of his. Nick Robinson was actually going the other way, speeding one hundred miles cross-country to Worcester to join his grandfather who had a runner there. But the Great Jubilee would be on national radio and Nick was already tuned in. He had already taken his chance and placed a credit bet of £25 on Chalk Stream to win at starting price. It was a quieter, less restricted time in England – only about one-fifth of the cars of today were being driven. There were no speed limits on fast country roads, the breathalyzer had not been invented, and it was indeed a privileged time for young men like Robert Sangster and Nick Robinson.

The horses came into the Kempton paddock and Robert and Christine watched Chalk Stream walk round. Eric thought he looked a bit on his toes, a bit restless. The trainer spoke tersely to his young jockey, Brian Lee, instructing him not to leave things too late, to set off for home two furlongs out with a steady run, and then to drive him to the line, if necessary under the whip.

The runners left to go down to the start and Christine and Eric headed to a high point in the grandstand while Robert walked down the sloping lawn towards the bookmakers. He located Heathorns’ pitch and strolled up to look at the prices. Chalk Stream was fluctuating between 7–1 and 9–1, drifting in the market, if anything. There was a big crowd and he stood unnoticed, as the throng hustled and bustled to place their bets.

‘They’re at the post!’ called the racecourse announcer. And within a couple of minutes Eric Cousins had his binoculars trained on the green and blue colours of Chalk Stream and Brian Lee far out across the course. Robert edged nearer to Heathorns, keeping his back to Major Ronnie Upex and his eyes on the grandstand, from which Eric was watching from the pre-planned spot.

The starter called the horses in. Chalk Stream moved up with the rest of them. Robert edged back further. ‘They’re under starter’s orders!’ – Chalk Stream was standing still – ‘And they’re off! Chalk Stream suddenly rushed forward, racing away with the leaders. Eric Cousins’s hat flew from his head and he held it aloft for his young owner to see. Robert whipped round and shouted, ‘£100 to win Chalk Stream, please, Major. I’ll take the 8–1.’

‘Eight hundred pounds to one, down to Mr Sangster,’ said Major Upex to his clerk, and even as he spoke the field was already through the first furlong galloping fast down the back straight with a little over a mile to run. It was a very hot race. The favourite was Nerograph, who had already won the prestigious City and Suburban Handicap this season, and he was carrying only two pounds more than Chalk Stream. The great Australian jockey Scobie Breasley was on Thames Trader who would go on to win the Bessborough Stakes at Royal Ascot, and then there was Alec Head’s horse, Sallymount, who had come over from France and carried top weight, twenty-eight pounds more than Chalk Stream. All the great English jockeys were riding: young Lester Piggott, Joe Mercer, the Queen’s jockey Harry Carr, Bill Rickaby and the ultrastylist Jimmy Lindley.

Robert struggled his way to higher ground. Now they had only five furlongs to run and he could see the favourite Nerograph was out in front with Optimistic on his inside, these two tracked by Powder Rock and Midsummer Night. Chalk Stream was racing about eighth of the sixteen. They swung for home with a little more than two furlongs to run. The grandstand erupted with a deafening roar as the French horse Sallymount went for home first, coming to challenge Nerograph as they raced towards the furlong pole. The commentator called out: ‘It’s Sallymount for France on the outside, Nerograph on the inside, Thames Trader improving.’

Then he added the words which sent a dagger-like shiver down Robert’s spine: ‘Chalk Stream coming with a run along the rails’ And the crowd was on its feet to a man, shouting with excitement as Chalk Stream came to challenge Sallymount in the lead. Now Neville Sellwood went for his whip as he fought to hold the Sangster horse at bay. Chalk Stream was at his boot straps, and Sallymount fought with every ounce of strength he had, carrying his huge weight with immense courage. The ground was running out for both of them, and the post loomed in front. The two horses were locked together with fifty yards to run, and again Lee went to the whip. Chalk Stream gave it his all, running on with the utmost gallantry, and on the line he had it. By only a head, but he had it. Robert Sangster’s face was a photographer’s study in pure joy.

The rest of the day passed in a kind of glorious glow which turned to a bit of a blur, courtesy of Rheims finest. Robert had had a truly sensational start to his career as a racehorse owner, or at least Christine had. But for Robert the entire horse-racing scene represented something far deeper. He knew at Kempton Park on that sunlit spring afternoon in 1961 that he was hopelessly in love with the sport, that he would never stray far from the thunder of the hooves across the turf – win, lose or draw. He loved the sight of the horses, their beauty, and their courage. He loved the planning, the scheming, the second guessing the bookies and the handicappers. And today’s highly profitable endeavour against Major Upex? Well, Robert went for that in a major way. The sheer mischief of it appealed to him hugely. As well it might. Because mischief is a word which is very fitting to Robert Sangster. He has a mischievous face and a mischievous turn of mind, and he laughed about it for years afterwards.

Eric Cousins, by the way, wondered whether Chalk Stream would ever volunteer to run like that again. It had been another very tough race and the gelding had shown many signs of worry in his career so far. Privately, Eric thought that the horse had probably had enough of flat racing and that he would decline to enter for another battle such as the one he had just fought, and so bravely won. And Eric was right. Chalk Stream never won again. Chalk Stream actually never finished in the first three again. Very broadly, Chalk Stream had made an announcement, which, expressed in human terms, was simple: ‘Forget that. I have no intention of ever trying that hard again. I’m strictly here for the exercise.’ All through that season Eric Cousins tried to make him cast that ordeal from his mind. They ran him five times and they traipsed all over the north of England watching him. But he would not try again. The year which had begun with such sparkling promise, rather petered out for Robert.

In his very first season, Robert received a thorough grounding in the joys and agonies of racehorse ownership. He really was put through the mill, with enormous highs, culminating in the most dreadful anti-climax. He learned a million lessons about the wily ways of the thoroughbred racehorse. And he learned one lesson which would last him for all of his life: accept the greatest victory as if you are used to it, and accept the most awful defeat as if it does not matter. For Robert, the season ended officially on II November in the traditional English big-race finale, the Manchester November Handicap. Twenty-nine runners took part. Chalk Stream beat three. But now, as Robert and Christine drove home to the Wirral, there was no air of despondency. Robert’s eyes were on the future. He wanted more racehorses. Maybe quite of lot of them. He and Eric Cousins were not finished yet. Not by a long way.

In fact Eric was already regarded as a ‘hot’ trainer. Earlier that season he had won the 1961 Lincolnshire Handicap with a lightly weighted runner called Johns Court from a massive field of thirty-seven horses. Lee rode him and the horse won by three lengths at 25–1. Johns Court was sensationally fit that day, but he never won again all season. Not that this troubled Eric much. He also won the 1962 Lincolnshire with a different horse, Hill Royal, which also carried about seven and a half stone in a field of forty. Robert’s victory at Kempton was the start of a quite remarkable rampage in this race by Eric Cousins. He was to win it for the next three years in succession. Everybody was talking about Eric Cousins. Bookmakers were griping and moaning, handicappers were furious with him, and the Stewards of the Jockey Club were beginning to get very beady. How the devil could this ex-fighter pilot keep on producing horses so superbly fit on the day, never with as much as one pound too much on the handicap, invariably at a whacking great price?

Robert, of course, was by now right in the thick of it. He had prised loose some family cash and now had half a dozen horses in training – all bought by Eric at the sales, all judged by him to be capable of ‘improvement’. And as he improved them the Stewards became crosser. They usually have a short unwritten ‘hit list’ of trainers they believe are being devious in the extreme, losing races when it suits them, and then flying to victory with light weights and big bets. To suggest Eric Cousins was on this ‘hit list’ of trainers who might be called in to face the Disciplinary Committee would be childish in the extreme. He was at the top of it. And everyone knew the Stewards were watching his every move.

The phrase ‘Cousins and Sangster’ was being heard in high places, as the pair of them toured the North Country and Scottish tracks having what Robert recalls as ‘some of the most wonderful days of my life’. The racing was very much ‘bush league’ but to the young heir to Vernons Pools those races might have been the Derby. Every one of them gave him a charge of adrenalin. He never gave a thought to the beckoning glory of great classic races, with hugely expensive horses and massive prizes. For him, every race in which he had a runner was the Derby, especially when Eric told them to ‘get on’. Robert just loved the local courses, and he loved to drive up to Scotland with his golf clubs, playing nine holes in the long summer evenings after the races, then dining sumptuously with his close friends, preparing to face the enemy (the bookmakers) once more on the morrow.

In those years of the 60s, he and Eric had some mighty ‘touches’. They also had some diabolical strokes of ill-fortune which were just another part of the game, but which the Stewards neither knew nor cared about. Goodwood Racecourse, set high in the glorious Sussex Downs with a long southerly view to Chichester Cathedral and the Isle of Wight, was the scene of perhaps their most spectacular catastrophe. It occurred in 1963. Nick Robinson, by now almost a ‘blood brother’ to Robert, was heavily involved. In fact Nick’s grandfather, the redoubtable Sir Foster, former captain and wicket-keeper for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, fly fisherman and occasional punter, could be said to have been the instigator of the entire disaster. The race was the 120-year-old Stewards Cup, a six-furlong sprint handicap which was traditionally run on the opening day of Goodwood’s July Meeting. It is always an enormous betting race, a regular target for ‘hot’ trainers with lightly weighted horses. It provides also one of the most spectacular sights in all of English racing as a big Stewards Cup field thunders to the top of the hill, the silks stark against the horizon, and then hurtles line abreast down the steep dip towards the grandstand.

Old Sir Foster had actually lost this race three years in a row, finishing second every time with a very fast horse called Deer Leap. The distances were, hideously, a neck and two short heads. Each time Nick and Robert, not to mention Sir Foster, had had a good bet. Each time they lost – in 1961 to the great Skymaster. The Stewards Cup was not much short of a bug-bear to all of them. Now, as the 1963 season headed towards midsummer, Eric Cousins imparted the nerve-jangling news that Robert’s horse Highroy was just about fast enough to avenge Sir Foster. In fact the horse’s entire preparation would be for the Stewards Cup, and he, Eric, believed he would win it. This possessed enormous appeal to the Robin Hood of Vernons. He, Robert, now had the means to win them back all of their lost money. For weeks before the race, they plunged the cash onto Highroy, as if defeat was out of the question.

However, when the overnight declarations came up, there was bad news. The venerable Newmarket trainer Jack Jarvis had unexpectedly decided to run Lord Rosebery’s sprinter Creole, and naturally summoned his stylish stable jockey Peter Robinson to ride – the same Peter Robinson Eric had booked for Highroy. This was a serious blow. Eric hustled around and booked Paul Tulk for Highroy, a capable jockey but not his first choice. The race was, as usual, run at a ferocious pace and on the line Creole beat Highroy a short head. Robert and Nick could not believe their luck. Eric was very fed up too. But he had a plan. Three days later on the Friday there was another Goodwood sprint, the Chichester Stakes, and in his view Highroy would have recovered sufficiently to run and win. ‘The competition is not so hot,’ he said. ‘And Jarvis does not have a runner. Peter Robinson will ride for us.’

Once more Robert and Nick plunged into the bookmakers, and once more they stood, gripped by nerves, high in the County Stand, their fingers white-knuckled on their binoculars. This was getting expensive. And once more Highroy got beat in a photo-finish, by a short head.

‘Christ!’ said Robert. ‘Can you believe that could happen? Can you believe that?’

‘Not easily,’ said Nick. ‘By the way, did you see who rode the winner?’

‘If you say Paul Tulk I’ll probably commit suicide.’

‘Don’t do it, Robert,’ said Nick, shaking his head gravely. ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’

This was not the only time in 1963 when Robert felt the need for a drink. It was an awful season for him. Not one of his horses won anywhere. But this seemed only to spur him on to greater ambitions, to own more horses, to go racing more often, and to study formlines and breeding lines even more assiduously.

Curiously it had been a powerful owner-breeder and member of the Jockey Club who had inspired him to lose so much money on those Goodwood sprints. And now it would be the same senior establishment figure who would get it all back for him and more. Sir Foster Robinson had a two-year-old filly who had not yet won a race. She was bright chestnut in colour and rather lean and athletic in conformation. Her name was Homeward Bound. It was her ancestry which intrigued Robert: she was a half-sister to Chalk Stream, his very first horse, both of them being out of Sir Foster’s mare Sabie River. When Nick imparted the news that his grandfather’s trainer, John Oxley, thought she would win the Oaks, England’s premier mile-and-a-half classic for fillies, run at Epsom three days after the Derby in June, Robert could scarcely locate a bookmaker fast enough.

On the day of the race the bookmakers were still offering 100–7 against Homeward Bound winning the Oaks. They who handled the accounts of N. J. F. Robinson and R. Sangster lived, however, to rue their careless and uncharacteristic generosity. On a wet afternoon on Epsom Downs, Homeward Bound came with a tremendous run down the middle to win the 1964 Oaks by two lengths from Windmill Girl (the future dam of Arthur Budgett’s two Derby winners). It was the finest moment in all of his years of racing for Sir Foster Robinson, now aged eighty-four. It was not half bad for his grandson and his sidekick either.

The victory of Homeward Bound did not spur Robert Sangster on towards the upper reaches of thoroughbred racing – with thoughts of perhaps one day owning an Oaks winner of his own, or perhaps even a Derby winner, or any other classic winner. But rather it seemed to concentrate his mind on the intricacies of breeding racehorses, as indeed the subject has captured men of similar thoughtful and ambitious disposition down the years. He had loved the electric atmosphere of the big summer occasion on Epsom Downs, but what really fascinated him was the fact that Homeward Bound was from the same mare as Chalk Stream. He worked out that the basic shape and conformation of the two horses was from the dam. He also considered that their similar will-to-win must spring from the same genes. But Homeward Bound’s superior class, and her ability to run over a longer distance, and to keep running on strongly, uphill to the finish, must surely have come from her sire, the great staying horse and champion stallion, Alycidon. Robert immersed himself in books about the subject, poring over long-forgotten pedigrees, tracing bloodlines to famous stallions, trying to formulate patterns of breeding, which stallion lines worked best with which female lines.

But these were his evening preoccupations. His day-to-day dramas on the racecourse were still conducted around the northern tracks, and the one he loved most of all was the modest Scottish course which sits on the south Ayrshire coast on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. The two big meetings at Ayr Racecourse, in June and the Western Meeting in September, represented for Robert something approximately between Christmas and Mardi Gras. Or at least he was apt to turn the occasions into those qualities of celebration. He would arrive on the evening before the racing began, by now sweeping up the drive to the Turnberry Hotel in a new Rolls Royce, and within the hour he would report to one of the greatest golf links in the world. Turnberry, a 7000-yard championship test, spreads along the shoreline, guarded by a magnificent lighthouse. In terms of difficulty it compares very favourably with Robert’s home links of Hoylake, and like Royal Liverpool has been the scene of a titanic and historic battle for the British Open – in 1977 Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus burst ten strokes clear of the field before Watson’s 65 beat Jack’s last-round 66. Its views out towards the Irish Sea are as romantic as those from the Wirral. In the near distance you can see the granite dome of the island of Ailsa Craig, and beyond that the Mull of Kintyre. On very clear days, you can see the distant shores of County Antrim in the north-east of Ireland. With the possible exception of the winner’s enclosure at the nearby racecourse, Robert’s favourite place on all of this earth may very well be the ninth hole at Turnberry, the tee of which sits on a rocky pinnacle out to sea.

Nick Robinson recalls one glorious summer evening here, just as the sun was turning the far reaches of the ocean to the colour of spent fire as it sunk behind the waves. Robert was about to hit when someone carelessly asked him, in the middle of his backswing, ‘Does that lighthouse work?’

‘Only when it’s dark,’ replied Robert breezily as he struck a long drive out over the in-running tide and over the cliffs towards the fairway, and the green, set hard by the great nautical light.

Only truly diabolical weather ever prevented him playing nine holes after a day at the races. And nothing ever prevented him playing eighteen before he went to the races.

Win, lose or draw, he and his friends – plus of course Eric Cousins – dined sumptuously at the Turnberry Hotel every night, not, incidentally, at his expense, although he would usually insist on standing the party two or three bottles of decent champagne by way of an overture. Sometimes the party was overshadowed by a particularly grim loss to the bookmakers, but not for long. And certainly not on the occasions when his chestnut colt Shy Boy (by Alycidon) – bought for 2300 guineas at the autumn sales – won twice at the Ayr June meeting over a mile and a half. Definitely not when his bay gelding Endorsement – bought for only 1000 guineas from Jack Jarvis – won the Ayrshire Handicap by a neck from Night Star. Words can barely describe the fun and games which broke out after Robert’s lovely chestnut filly Brief Star got up on the line to win the major race of the Western Meeting, the Ayr Gold Cup.

However, no race in Eric Cousins’s relatively short but meteoric career as a trainer ever matched that Gold Cup for such personal tensions and feelings of rivalry inside his own stable. It had all begun back in the days of the old Kardomah lunch club. Robert had introduced two of his friends to Eric. They were David Freeman who ran an upmarket meat canning business (Gold Dish Ox-Tongues), and Leo McParland, whose family owned a major cattle importing business, bringing the beasts in from Ireland presumably in order to help fill the Freeman cans. These two old friends also went in together and bought a couple of racehorses, but one of them was a very useful filly named Ludham, and when she finished third in the Oaks, having finished second in the Cheshire Oaks, Robert felt slightly aggrieved at the sheer quality of their filly – better than any horse he had ever owned. Then Ludham came out and won the Doonside Cup at Ayr and they all thought Robert’s nose was really out of joint, though he said nothing.