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By the spring of 1960 Robert, now coming up to twenty-four, was planning to get married. He had met and spent almost a year with the very beautiful, tall, dark-haired, Manchester model Christine Street, whose career was on a major upswing with several television appearances to her credit and increasing work in London. Her parents owned the George Hotel in Penrith, a market town in Cumbria, fifteen miles south of the border town of Carlisle. Unsurprisingly Christine was not your average model. She was extremely well educated, having attended one of the best girls’ boarding schools in the north of England – Queen Ethelburga’s at Harrogate – and completed her studies at the Swiss finishing school Brillantmont in Lausanne. She was also extremely well mannered.

A grand society wedding was being planned at Penrith for the month of May, and the lunch club at the Kardomah was heavy with advice for the prospective bridegroom, particularly about the importance of the lunch club, even to a married man. It was into this slightly restless atmosphere that a stranger, named Nick Robinson, walked one morning in early March. He was new to the city and had been brought to the Kardomah by one of the regulars who worked in the giant packaging business built up by Nick’s grandfather, the eighty-year-old Sir Foster Robinson.

Nick’s background was not dissimilar to Robert’s. He had been head boy at his famous prep school, Hawtreys, on the edge of the Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, and had completed his education at Harrow. He had entered the family business at their headquarters in Bristol, but upon his grandfather’s specific instructions had been sent to their Liverpool office for two years to learn the technique of the Sales Department. But where Robert was addicted to hard contact sports like boxing and rugby football, Nick’s game was horse racing. He had been brought up to it, as Robert had been to championship golf.

As they all sat in the Kardomah, the talk turned gradually to the sport which was so important to the newcomer. He told them of his grandfather’s sprawling Wicken Park Stud, in Buckinghamshire, where racing fillies became broodmares and spent almost all of the rest of their lives in foal. He told them of the great breeding stallions of the day, horses who thought nothing of covering forty mares in a season, like Palestine, Court Martial, Swaps, Nashua, Court Harwell, Alycidon and the new young Crepello who had beaten Ballymoss in the 1958 Derby. At that Robert remembered with a blinding flash: ‘That’s my man O’Brien.’ He seriously considered issuing the old ‘Greatest trainer of all time’ line across the young Mr Robinson, but decided against it. Instead he observed, more typically, that upon reflection he’d rather be a stallion than a broodmare.

For a table of young men so profoundly ignorant about the subject of racing thoroughbreds, Nick Robinson was getting a substantial amount of attention. They actually found it rather a fascination. But he really got them when he disclosed the deathless piece of information that the stable which trained for his grandfather thought he might win the Lincolnshire Handicap with his five-year-old bay gelding Chalk Stream. ‘And’, added Nick darkly, ‘it might just be possible to have a really nice touch, at about 20–1.’

Now he was really talking. This group understood money, perhaps above all else, and the chance of landing a sizeable chunk of it without working was, as they say in New York, hitting ’em right where they lived. Robert, already interested, was teetering on the verge of enthralment. ‘OK, Nick,’ he said. ‘Let me just get this straight. The Lincolnshire Handicap is a race, over what distance? One mile? Right. Now, how many are in it? About thirty? Christ, that’s rather a lot, isn’t it? Right. Now why do you think Chalk Stream might win?’

‘Well, for a start, he is a pretty good racehorse. He has some experience, plenty of speed without being a champion or anything, he’s been working extremely well for the past week or so, and above all he runs off a very light weight – under seven stone. We think he has a decent chance.’

‘What do you mean a light weight?’ said someone. ‘I thought they all carried the same weight, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

‘Now this is a tricky subject.’ said Nick doing his best to simplify it. ‘In big races they do all carry the same weight, but this is a handicap and all the horses are weighted differently. The Jockey Club handicapper is basically trying to get them all to finish in a line, a dead heat. So he piles weight on the good horses to slow them up and leaves the less good ones with just a little. The idea being that every horse has a fair chance.’

‘What kind of weight?’

‘Oh, just lead weight slipped into the saddle cloth.’

‘You mean, if the jockey weighs eight stone and the horse has to carry nine stone, they just put fourteen pounds of lead in the cloth?’

‘That’s it. Chuck in a couple of pounds for the saddle and there’ll be six pounds of lead either side of the horse’s flanks.’

‘Yes, but how do they know what weight to put in? How does the handicapper know that his weights will slow the good horse down enough for the slower ones to catch him?’

‘Well, that is a real speciality which can take almost a lifetime to master. But in the broadest possible terms, if, in a one-mile race, Horse A beats Horse B by three lengths at level weights, the handicapper will calculate it at two pounds a length, and he will ask Horse A to carry six pounds more than Horse B the next time they meet over a mile. In theory this should bring them across the line together. Of course it may not, because Horse A may have more in hand than everyone thought, and he may again win by three lengths, and the handicapper will give him six pounds more the next time. Eventually the handicapper will stop him from winning.’

‘So,’ said Robert, ‘if a horse keeps losing, his weight is likely to get a lot lighter?’

‘Precisely. And some trainers deliberately keep a horse losing – it’s called “working him down the handicap” – until he has a weight so light he could not possibly be beaten. I mean, for example, he’s carrying seven stone, when he should really be carrying nine stone …’

‘And that’s when they have a real bet?’ said Robert.

‘Correct.’

‘Christ! Is that what’s happening with Chalk Stream?’

‘I am not sure about that, but Arthur Budgett, his trainer, says he is “very nicely weighted” – and that’ll do for me. I’m backing him to win the Lincoln, 23 March.’

‘Where do they run the Lincoln?’

‘Lincoln. On a Wednesday. The race is always like the Charge of the Light Brigade. They try to go flat out from start to finish and if our horse wins … well, there’s no feeling of elation quite like it.’

‘Especially if your pockets are full of the bookmaker’s money,’ said Robert. ‘OK, Nick,’ he added, seeking some final assurance, ‘now just tell me very simply why you think Chalk Stream is actually going to win.’

‘Well, mainly because he damn nearly won it last year, dead-heated for second place. He has won three races, but last season he was very unlucky, placed second five times. Now I hear he is very well, working sharply in the morning and he has that low weight.’

Robert decided then and there that he would join the owner’s grandson and place a bet of £25 each way on the horse. He did so with another bookmaker, not Vernons Credit Betting, and they all waited, with almost daily conferences at the Kardomah, for the great day to come.

On Saturday morning, 19 March, they met at the coffee house early, prior to Robert driving his colleagues fast back out to the Wirral to play rugby that afternoon for Birkenhead Park. Nick was there first, poring over the Sporting Life, the specialist newspaper for the horse-racing industry. As far as the others were concerned it might have been printed in Latin. But Nick had known his way around that publication almost since birth, and now he had the page open at the Four-Day Acceptors, and he was studying precisely who the opposition would be, the booked jockeys and, above all, the weights.

‘The first thing to check’, he said, ‘is the top weight … damn it. Sovereign Path’s stood its ground.’

‘I suppose there is no possibility of you breaking into English?’ said Robert. ‘What d’you mean “Damn it. Sovereign Path’s stood its ground”?’

‘Well, Sovereign Path, who is a very tough grey horse, has already won six races, one of them by ten lengths. He nearly won a classic trial last season and he is the best horse in the Lincoln. I was rather hoping he would not be ready this early in the season. But he’s in and his jockey is booked. He’ll run. Still, he has a huge amount of weight – nine stone five pounds. No horse has carried that much to win the Lincoln this century. Anyway, I don’t really think he will be happy giving us thirty pounds.’

‘Could you tell me how you know all that stuff, about the biggest weight this century and everything?’ asked Robert.

‘Oh, those are just little facts that all horse-racing people know, or somehow get to know, round about the time of the Lincoln. I think the biggest weight was carried by Dorigen who won in 1933. I’m not sure of the exact amount, but it was less than nine-five.’

‘Well, it would take me about fifty years to learn it all,’ said Robert, and then, ‘Hey! What about this horse, Courts Appeal, he’s from the O’Brien stable in Ireland. Vincent O’Brien, best trainer in the world.’

Nick looked up, grinning. Robert, flushed with success, having detonated his one shining fact about racing, decided to elaborate, and he charged on. ‘Trained the runner-up in the Derby for the same owner, John McShain, a couple of years ago, as I remember. A very shrewd man.’

Nick replied, ‘Yes, and he trained Mr McShain’s mare Gladness to win the Gold Cup a couple of years ago, and they’ll probably make Courts Appeal favourite just because O’Brien is bringing him over from Ireland. But he won’t win, not with eight stone twelve pounds.’

At this stage Robert shuddered at the thought of his early view that this was a rather ‘uncomplicated sport’, since such a notion could clearly have been considered only by a lunatic. This was the most complicated sport he had ever known. It would, he thought, take a lifetime to comprehend it.

On the day of the race, all of them were strategically placed around the city with phone lines open to Robert’s credit office to hear the result. This was, of course, long before the days of commentaries being beamed into betting shops and call-in phone lines. And when they heard the result there was a terrible hush. Chalk Stream had finished nowhere. In fact he had finished twenty-ninth out of thirty-one. Understandably Nick Robinson was a bit sheepish and did not call Robert until he had ascertained that the gelding had been very hesitant at the start, had lost his place in the general mêlée for position, and never got into the race at all. Such things happen every day in racing, but Nick was nonetheless quite upset that his new friend had lost so heavily and told him they would have another chance. Chalk Stream would come good, of that he was sure.

What he did not know was that Robert Sangster did not give a tinker’s cuss about the result, or the £50. He could not remember having had such fun (at least, not since he had flattened Tiny Davies). For weeks now he had been personally involved in this major horse race. Somehow he had lived that Lincolnshire Handicap in his mind. It was almost as if he had been there at the racecourse, listening to the roar of the crowd as the field thundered into the last furling.

In his mind he could almost hear the vicarious pounding hooves, as Sam Hall’s lightly weighted chestnut gelding Mustavon, hard under the whip, fought a gripping battle with Jim Joel’s Major General to win by three parts of a length. It had been a terrific race. There was less than a length between the first three. The big weight had beaten Sovereign Path, as it also had beaten the O’Brien-trained favourite Courts Appeal. In a strange way Robert felt a part of all this, as if their studied calculations in the Kardomah had somehow influenced the result.

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.

2
A Glimpse of the Green

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?