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Anyone remember him. I'm old but I was too young.
Just had Joe Mercer who looks remarkably fit talking about him on RUK.
Just had Joe Mercer who looks remarkably fit talking about him on RUK.
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Kenny, They say he was a better jockey than Joe, so he must have been very good.
should have been on horse racing but wirked out ok. :-)
Brilliant if you knew that without googling tmm, or did The Captain fill you in?
Geoff Lewis 'He would have been one of the greats. I'd put him in the same class as Lester Piggott' Fifty years ago this week, racing lost one of its brightest stars when Manny Mercer, elder brother of Joe, was killed in a tragic accident at Ascot. John Cobb looks back at that fateful day and at a riding talent left unfulfilled.
NOBODY in racing needs reminding of the monstrous cruelty of young life cut down before being allowed the chance to bloom. Just as the sport now grieves over the loss of Jamie Kyne and Jan Wilson, so the same sense of promise tragically unfulfilled cast a shroud 50 years ago this week when the bright-burning light that was Manny Mercer was extinguished by a horrific fall in front of packed stands at Ascot.
All people are equal on the turf and under it but some say that the death of Mercer at the age of 30 pierced the racing world like no other before.
The racing community lost an idol - a rider who was the epitome of style in the saddle and who strode elegantly through life with joyous verve -anda 15-month-old girl lost a father she would only ever know through the remembrances of his colleagues and through his journal, a memoir of his short life she still cherishes.
Carolyn Mercer, who would grow up to be married to a champion jockey, Pat Eddery, and become a title-winning rider in her own right, was left to be brought up along with her older sister Joanna by her mother, Susan, under the watchful gaze of another giant of the turf, her grandfather Harry Wragg.
Never far away was her father's younger brother, Joe, who had the trauma of being present at Ascot and of riding in the race in which Manny was killed going to the start.
"It was a mile-and-a-half handicap and in those days after you left the paddock you went down past the stands, turned and cantered back towards the start," Mercer recalls. "Mine had already cantered ahead but when I got to the start I realised Manny wasn't there and thought his filly must have been withdrawn. It was only when we finished the race that I saw him. He was already dead and laid out on a stretcher. I still have the helmet, of papier mache and cork, and the silks he wore that day."
Geoff Lewis did see what happened, as his mount was following Manny Mercer's out of the paddock. "As she turned, Mercer's mount got excited and suddenly reared up, throwing him back on the rail and catching his shoulder and neck," he told the inquest. "The horse landed on top of him and then rolled on the ground, kicking out as it tried to get back on its feet.
"Mercer was pressed against the rails by the horse and then fell away on to the turf and just as he was falling the horse kicked him twice in the face. He flopped on the ground and did not move."
It had been the fifth race of the day, one on which Joe Mercer had ridden a double including the big race, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, on Rosalba. The final race was abandoned and Priddy Fair, the unknowing filly whose hooves had brought such swift death, was retired on the spot. Her owner, Sir Foster Robinson, did not wish to parade the cause of such tragedy in public again.
"It wasn't her fault. She turned too quickly and slipped," Jimmy Lindley, also riding at Ascot that day, remembers. "She just flicked out her hoof and caught Manny's head, which was trapped between the concrete post and her kick."
Lindley, a contemporary and longtime friend of Joe Mercer, could not have held his brother in higher regard. "Joe and I started out at the same time and Manny was our guru.
If he hadn't been killed he would have been one of the greats. I'd put him in the same class as Lester Piggott.
"Horses would level out and run for him, without him appearing to move, and he rarely went for his stick. He'd stalk you like a shadow. You'd just hear this rhythmic whistling sound coming up behind, like air coming out of a flat tyre.
"He was an enigma, a real character. In those days if you were caught smoking on Newmarket Heath you were automatically a disqualified person. Manny used to drive on to the Heath in his Healey with 100 Players on the dashboard and Sir Jack Jarvis, who was a god among Newmarket trainers at that time, wouldn't say a word to him, he thought so much of him.
"He'd bowl up in terrific style with his flat cap at an angle - no hard hats in those days - his cigarettes in his jodhpurs. If he hadn't been a jockey he'd have been a Formula One racing driver, he had such style.
"And he was a bloody good bridge player. Between races he'd sit next to you in the weighing room reading the bridge column in the Times and working out the hands.
"Manny was brilliant at tumbling a horse at home, working out their potential before they got to the racecourse. Like Kieren Fallon today, he was a natural on a horse, a genius at finding their ability on the gallops.
"Back in 1953 he'd been second jockey to Bill Rickaby at Jarvis's but he'd worked out that Happy Laughter was a brilliant filly, the best he'd ridden he told me, even though she'd been beaten in the Free Handicap while the stable's main 1,000 Guineas hope, Tessa Gillian, had hacked up at Hurst Park on the Victoria Cup card."
Happy Laughter started at 10-1 in the 1,000 Guineas, backed from 100-7, and beat the Rickaby-ridden Tessa Gillian into second by two lengths to give Mercer his first Classic success.
He also won the 2,000 Guineas on Darius, the Lincoln as a 7lb claimer at 100-1, and was placed in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and twice in the Derby, but it was Mercer's victory on Wilwyn in the inaugural Washington DC International of 1952 that established him as someone operating on a higher level.
Looking back through his memoirs now, Carolyn Eddery is astounded at the amount of foreign travel her father undertook at a time when Sunday trips to Longchamp to ride for his French retainer, Marcel Boussac, meant train and ferry rather than plane and helicopter.
It was all a far cry from a childhood in Stockport, the son of a coach painter who had been the right size to be a jockey but whose family had been too poor to allow him the chance. Instead, Mercer and the three other brothers among his seven siblings were sent off into stables to fulfil the ambition denied to his father who, mercifully perhaps, died earlier in the year in which his eldest son was killed.
"We were rivals on the racecourse, but great friends," Joe Mercer, now almost 75, says of his long-lamented brother. "I beat him in a race at Lingfield, on Eldoret, the horse who had given me my first win, and he loved it, being beaten by his kid brother. He would have been champion jockey for years if he hadn't been killed."
Lindley endorses that opinion. "Manny Mercer changed the style of riding as much as Steve Cauthen when he came to Britain in the 1970s. He rode with a much neater style than the older generation. To my mind, his death was the greatest racing tragedy of my lifetime."
EVEN the death of a highprofile sportsman like Mercer changed little, however. He was just one of 15 jockeys killed in action on the racecourse in the 1950s and, although it was ten years until the next fatality, Derek Stansfield, after a fall at Hamilton, it was not until the death of Joe Blanks at Brighton in 1981 that all concrete posts were removed from British tracks.
The development of a riding helmet that might provide life-saving protection was similarly slow in coming until jockeys travelling to America brought back prototypes for the modern version.
There is, however, a legacy to the events at Ascot on September 26, 1959. Priddy Fair - whose colours are these days carried by the horses of Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds - was packed off immediately to stud and became the granddam of Dibidale, the Irish and Yorkshire Oaks winner of 1974 who would also have won at Epsom if her saddle had not slipped, leaving Willie Carson at full stretch just to stay on board.
Then there is Henry Emmanuel Mercer, Joe's son, 50 next April and bearing the name of both the uncle and grandfather he never saw.
Manny's widow, Susan, the sister of another doyen of Newmarket, Geoff Wragg, eventually remarried but never got over his death, according to Joe Mercer. She died in 2005 at the age of 73 after a long battle against motor neurone disease.
Manny Mercer was buried in Newmarket, in the cemetery just by the turn-off for the Rowley Mile. His grave is not far from the entrance, just towards the right-hand side, for those who might like to pay their respects, as Carolyn does regularly.
She also re-reads her father's memoirs and cannot help but stop at a line in his final entry for September 1959: "Who knows what the life ahead holds for me."
MANNY MERCER CV Full name Emmanuel Lionel Mercer Born Bradford, November 15, 1928 Family Son of Emmanuel Mercer (coach painter); elder brother of Joe Mercer (champion jockey); husband of Susan Wragg (married 1955, daughter of Harry Wragg); father of Carolyn Eddery (champion lady rider) Apprenticed to Jim Russell, Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire 1945-47; George Colling, Newmarket 1947-50 First winner Wings Ashore, Lanark, July 17, 1946 First big winner Jockey Treble (1947 Lincolnshire Handicap, 100-1) Washington DC International winner Wilwyn (1952) English Classic winners Happy Laughter (1953 1,000 Guineas), Darius (1954 2,000 Guineas) Other Classic winners Lucero (1956 Irish 2,000 Guineas), Talgo (1956 Irish Derby), Garden State (1956 Irish Oaks), Discorea (1959 Irish Oaks) Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe runner-up Talgo (1956, behind Ribot) Placed mounts in the Derby Sybil's Nephew (2nd, 1951), Darius (3rd, 1954) Highest position in jockeys' table 2nd in 1954 Most wins in a season 125 in 1958 Total wins in Britain 978 in 14 seasons Last winner Diffidence, Ascot, September 24, 1959 Died Ascot, September 26, 1959, aged 30 Compiled by John Randall Manny Mercer: "He used to drive on to the Heath in his Healey with 100 Players on the dashboard"
NOBODY in racing needs reminding of the monstrous cruelty of young life cut down before being allowed the chance to bloom. Just as the sport now grieves over the loss of Jamie Kyne and Jan Wilson, so the same sense of promise tragically unfulfilled cast a shroud 50 years ago this week when the bright-burning light that was Manny Mercer was extinguished by a horrific fall in front of packed stands at Ascot.
All people are equal on the turf and under it but some say that the death of Mercer at the age of 30 pierced the racing world like no other before.
The racing community lost an idol - a rider who was the epitome of style in the saddle and who strode elegantly through life with joyous verve -anda 15-month-old girl lost a father she would only ever know through the remembrances of his colleagues and through his journal, a memoir of his short life she still cherishes.
Carolyn Mercer, who would grow up to be married to a champion jockey, Pat Eddery, and become a title-winning rider in her own right, was left to be brought up along with her older sister Joanna by her mother, Susan, under the watchful gaze of another giant of the turf, her grandfather Harry Wragg.
Never far away was her father's younger brother, Joe, who had the trauma of being present at Ascot and of riding in the race in which Manny was killed going to the start.
"It was a mile-and-a-half handicap and in those days after you left the paddock you went down past the stands, turned and cantered back towards the start," Mercer recalls. "Mine had already cantered ahead but when I got to the start I realised Manny wasn't there and thought his filly must have been withdrawn. It was only when we finished the race that I saw him. He was already dead and laid out on a stretcher. I still have the helmet, of papier mache and cork, and the silks he wore that day."
Geoff Lewis did see what happened, as his mount was following Manny Mercer's out of the paddock. "As she turned, Mercer's mount got excited and suddenly reared up, throwing him back on the rail and catching his shoulder and neck," he told the inquest. "The horse landed on top of him and then rolled on the ground, kicking out as it tried to get back on its feet.
"Mercer was pressed against the rails by the horse and then fell away on to the turf and just as he was falling the horse kicked him twice in the face. He flopped on the ground and did not move."
It had been the fifth race of the day, one on which Joe Mercer had ridden a double including the big race, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, on Rosalba. The final race was abandoned and Priddy Fair, the unknowing filly whose hooves had brought such swift death, was retired on the spot. Her owner, Sir Foster Robinson, did not wish to parade the cause of such tragedy in public again.
"It wasn't her fault. She turned too quickly and slipped," Jimmy Lindley, also riding at Ascot that day, remembers. "She just flicked out her hoof and caught Manny's head, which was trapped between the concrete post and her kick."
Lindley, a contemporary and longtime friend of Joe Mercer, could not have held his brother in higher regard. "Joe and I started out at the same time and Manny was our guru.
If he hadn't been killed he would have been one of the greats. I'd put him in the same class as Lester Piggott.
"Horses would level out and run for him, without him appearing to move, and he rarely went for his stick. He'd stalk you like a shadow. You'd just hear this rhythmic whistling sound coming up behind, like air coming out of a flat tyre.
"He was an enigma, a real character. In those days if you were caught smoking on Newmarket Heath you were automatically a disqualified person. Manny used to drive on to the Heath in his Healey with 100 Players on the dashboard and Sir Jack Jarvis, who was a god among Newmarket trainers at that time, wouldn't say a word to him, he thought so much of him.
"He'd bowl up in terrific style with his flat cap at an angle - no hard hats in those days - his cigarettes in his jodhpurs. If he hadn't been a jockey he'd have been a Formula One racing driver, he had such style.
"And he was a bloody good bridge player. Between races he'd sit next to you in the weighing room reading the bridge column in the Times and working out the hands.
"Manny was brilliant at tumbling a horse at home, working out their potential before they got to the racecourse. Like Kieren Fallon today, he was a natural on a horse, a genius at finding their ability on the gallops.
"Back in 1953 he'd been second jockey to Bill Rickaby at Jarvis's but he'd worked out that Happy Laughter was a brilliant filly, the best he'd ridden he told me, even though she'd been beaten in the Free Handicap while the stable's main 1,000 Guineas hope, Tessa Gillian, had hacked up at Hurst Park on the Victoria Cup card."
Happy Laughter started at 10-1 in the 1,000 Guineas, backed from 100-7, and beat the Rickaby-ridden Tessa Gillian into second by two lengths to give Mercer his first Classic success.
He also won the 2,000 Guineas on Darius, the Lincoln as a 7lb claimer at 100-1, and was placed in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and twice in the Derby, but it was Mercer's victory on Wilwyn in the inaugural Washington DC International of 1952 that established him as someone operating on a higher level.
Looking back through his memoirs now, Carolyn Eddery is astounded at the amount of foreign travel her father undertook at a time when Sunday trips to Longchamp to ride for his French retainer, Marcel Boussac, meant train and ferry rather than plane and helicopter.
It was all a far cry from a childhood in Stockport, the son of a coach painter who had been the right size to be a jockey but whose family had been too poor to allow him the chance. Instead, Mercer and the three other brothers among his seven siblings were sent off into stables to fulfil the ambition denied to his father who, mercifully perhaps, died earlier in the year in which his eldest son was killed.
"We were rivals on the racecourse, but great friends," Joe Mercer, now almost 75, says of his long-lamented brother. "I beat him in a race at Lingfield, on Eldoret, the horse who had given me my first win, and he loved it, being beaten by his kid brother. He would have been champion jockey for years if he hadn't been killed."
Lindley endorses that opinion. "Manny Mercer changed the style of riding as much as Steve Cauthen when he came to Britain in the 1970s. He rode with a much neater style than the older generation. To my mind, his death was the greatest racing tragedy of my lifetime."
EVEN the death of a highprofile sportsman like Mercer changed little, however. He was just one of 15 jockeys killed in action on the racecourse in the 1950s and, although it was ten years until the next fatality, Derek Stansfield, after a fall at Hamilton, it was not until the death of Joe Blanks at Brighton in 1981 that all concrete posts were removed from British tracks.
The development of a riding helmet that might provide life-saving protection was similarly slow in coming until jockeys travelling to America brought back prototypes for the modern version.
There is, however, a legacy to the events at Ascot on September 26, 1959. Priddy Fair - whose colours are these days carried by the horses of Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds - was packed off immediately to stud and became the granddam of Dibidale, the Irish and Yorkshire Oaks winner of 1974 who would also have won at Epsom if her saddle had not slipped, leaving Willie Carson at full stretch just to stay on board.
Then there is Henry Emmanuel Mercer, Joe's son, 50 next April and bearing the name of both the uncle and grandfather he never saw.
Manny's widow, Susan, the sister of another doyen of Newmarket, Geoff Wragg, eventually remarried but never got over his death, according to Joe Mercer. She died in 2005 at the age of 73 after a long battle against motor neurone disease.
Manny Mercer was buried in Newmarket, in the cemetery just by the turn-off for the Rowley Mile. His grave is not far from the entrance, just towards the right-hand side, for those who might like to pay their respects, as Carolyn does regularly.
She also re-reads her father's memoirs and cannot help but stop at a line in his final entry for September 1959: "Who knows what the life ahead holds for me."
MANNY MERCER CV Full name Emmanuel Lionel Mercer Born Bradford, November 15, 1928 Family Son of Emmanuel Mercer (coach painter); elder brother of Joe Mercer (champion jockey); husband of Susan Wragg (married 1955, daughter of Harry Wragg); father of Carolyn Eddery (champion lady rider) Apprenticed to Jim Russell, Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire 1945-47; George Colling, Newmarket 1947-50 First winner Wings Ashore, Lanark, July 17, 1946 First big winner Jockey Treble (1947 Lincolnshire Handicap, 100-1) Washington DC International winner Wilwyn (1952) English Classic winners Happy Laughter (1953 1,000 Guineas), Darius (1954 2,000 Guineas) Other Classic winners Lucero (1956 Irish 2,000 Guineas), Talgo (1956 Irish Derby), Garden State (1956 Irish Oaks), Discorea (1959 Irish Oaks) Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe runner-up Talgo (1956, behind Ribot) Placed mounts in the Derby Sybil's Nephew (2nd, 1951), Darius (3rd, 1954) Highest position in jockeys' table 2nd in 1954 Most wins in a season 125 in 1958 Total wins in Britain 978 in 14 seasons Last winner Diffidence, Ascot, September 24, 1959 Died Ascot, September 26, 1959, aged 30 Compiled by John Randall Manny Mercer: "He used to drive on to the Heath in his Healey with 100 Players on the dashboard"
They also asked Joe who is 84, but still under 8 stone, who was the greatest jockey in his era. He mentioned a few but said nothing about LP. See horse racing thread.
Yes, kenny, the captain used to tell me all about the old racing days, so I did know. That`s how I got into racing. Captain says Manny hit his head off a concrete post. Captain sends best wishes and hopes you are well and still skinning bookies!
p.s. regards stray cat. Woman across road took him. I would have given him a home but I have a dog and he hates cats, lol.
p.s. regards stray cat. Woman across road took him. I would have given him a home but I have a dog and he hates cats, lol.
That's good news, well done for caring. Lots wouldn't..
I read earler that the horse kicked him in the head which resulted in his death, but I was rushing so will have another read later.
I read earler that the horse kicked him in the head which resulted in his death, but I was rushing so will have another read later.
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