5th June 2009 - Sir Ivor - Brough Scott

Sir Ivor, Nijinsky and Mill Reef - the great Derbies of 1968, 1970, and 1971- and with this week’s launch on DVD of three re-mastered fifty minute films made at the time, there’s now the chance for new generations to judge what the old ones have been telling them. That this five year span was a golden age against which all other Derbies should be measured. Have a look at them yourself and to borrow a line from the late, great Fats Waller – “don’t tell me it ain’t true.”

For I have to declare an interest beyond that of being around and impressionable at the time. As related in these columns before (probably too often) I was the producer of the Mill Reef film. But even if the odd bit looks about as dated as the 70’s hairstyles, I am not going to apologize too much for getting Albert Finney’s voice to read Hugh McIlvanney’s words nor for getting to film the moment when Mill Reef first tried to walk in his plaster cast round the yard at Kingsclere.

More on that, and the unique good fortune of being able to mix lyrical young stock scenes at Rokeby with images from Paul Mellon’s fabled collection of sporting art then housed in the very heart of the stud in Virginia, later in the week. But the thrill of this launch, brought about by the initiative of Tim Exell’s highly successful Go Entertainment group, is that we celebrate not just one famous Derby winner but three. Say the names again gently; Sir Ivor, Nijinksy, Mill Reef. Believe me they were mighty, but looking back one of the mightiest things of all is that in these three separate cases people were moved enough at the time not just to knock off a couple of quick interviews but to go to the interminable hassle and massive expense of putting full scale film crews on to the operation.

Looking back now something very definite emerges. It is not that one can actually prove whether these three horses were actually better than the best of today. Nor indeed whether their riders and trainers would really have stood above their current peers. But after watching these films again one can state with absolute confidence that they cut bigger figures on their contemporary stage. Welcome back to the time when giants walked the racing earth.

THE YEAR OF SIR IVOR
Sir Ivor was a giant all right. So big as a two year old that Vincent O’Brien feared he would b “just a monster”, but so good once he hit the track that after he got the hang of it and won at the Curragh in July his owner Raymond Guest had £500 each way at 100-1 with William Hill on the next year’s Derby. In today’s terms Guest, the American ambassador to Ireland, stood to win the best part of three quarters of a million. Then as now, the bookie did not like it. No kidding, William Hill had taken the bet himself (on his yacht in Monte Carlo, those were the days) and later used everything short of blackmail to try and wriggle out of it.

That is just one strand in what, in my judgement, is by some margin the most exciting real time flat racing film ever made. It has specially shot coverage of the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas, The Derby, the Oaks, the Irish Derby, The Eclipse, The Arc and finale of finales, Lester and Sir Ivor coming from an impossibly blocked hole on the turn to wing up in the Washington DC International. It has an unbelievable narrative, racing’s two greatest ever human players and with Hugh McIlvanney a script worthy of their mettle.

Unfortunately the one thing it does not have is a narrator to match. Nigel Patrick was a distinguished actor of his time and played the lead opposite Jack Hawkins in the iconic 1959 “caper” movie “League of Gentlemen” but his voice is very much of the clipped post war era. With some of the music very much in the early mould there is an unhappy feel of Pathe News until you begin to let the actual McIlvanney words as well as the pictures come through - “Behind the beauty and excitement of horse racing there is drudgery. For every hopeful boy who graduates to the rainbow silks of a jockey there are scores who stay in the shabby sweater of the stable lad.”

On the track we see Sir Ivor in victory and defeat. Off it we are at Warren Place with Noel Murless, in Chantilly with Francois Boutin and, at the height of his wondrous powers, at Ballydoyle with Vincent O’Brien. Yet it is actually Lester’s film. Anybody who ever doubted what my generation have been raving about has to watch Piggott in the sequences before during and after the Derby. At that stage he was 32. He had already ridden three Derby winners, Sir Ivor was to be the first of six more and even 41 years on there is no mistaking the astonishing aura that Lester carried with him.

Of course with Sir Ivor he had a truly magnificent accomplice. I actually thought Sea The Stars was terrific at Newmarket and have backed him for Epsom, but what he has done so far pales in comparison to the Guineas winner of ‘68. Sir Ivor was the best two year old in Europe, winning both the National Stakes and the Grand Criterium. He wintered in Pisa, he won the 2,000 Guineas trial at Ascot in bottomless ground and at Newmarket many thought Piggott had erred in picking him over the much fancied Gimcrack and Middle Park winner Petingo. This year Ballydoyle may have trouble in working out which of their current herd is the best. There was no problem back then.

But Sir Ivor and Piggott still had to rise to the occasion and you will wear this DVD out before you tire of watching him cutting down the Sandy Barclay ridden, Murless trained Connaught in the last hundred yards. Connaught was a good horse and won the Eclipse next year. When he cuts for home Sir Ivor absolutely cannot catch him. But, as with all the greatest Piggott rides – “it couldn’t happen but it did”. In the weighing room 19 year old Barclay is in tears and a beautifu line says “Piggott finds he is commiserating not with a hardened rival but with a shattered boy.”

Few top horses have been campaigned as adventurously as Sir Ivor and none has closed out better. Even now it’s amazing to think that he got beat in the Irish Derby and was third and finished a bit sore a week later in the Eclipse, and then was beaten at Longchamp on his comeback a week before the Arc. There was then no disgrace in running second to Vaguely Noble in the Arc itself just as there is nothing but nostalgic pleasure in the paddock close ups of Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, Peter O’Toole and Maria Callas . Yet the real delight is that the best was yet to come, Sir Ivor was to go out in style.

The American hacks may have called Lester a “bum” for waiting so long on the tight Laurel Park circuit- but you won’t. Anyone who has ever watched a race will thrill at Piggott’s quite unbelievable insouciance as the Washington DC International unravels. “If Lester isn’t worried,” calls Peter O’Sullevan in commentary with Sir Ivor utterly trapped going to the final turn, “he is the only one of the thousands of Sir Ivor supporters who isn’t.” There’s barely a furlong run-in at Laurel but Lester calmly angles his horse out and fires the winning bullet.

It’s in every sense a match for– as well as a soggy contrast to – Sir Ivor’s dazzling sprint at Epsom. It hangs in the mind as we leave the final scene. Lester Piggott is walking down Capitol Hill in a smart black overcoat with the great white dome behind him and a large cigar in his right hand. “For most people,” says McIvanney, “the unique excitement of racing can be measured in a chain of vivid memories, those fleeting moments of blur and thunder which decide the great races.” Lester is closer now. He ignores us of course but takes a final triumphant pull on the cigar. “In 1968,” continues the commentary, “most of those moments belonged to Sir Ivor – and to the very special man who was on his back.”