Yes, had a drink with him on saturday night,a lovely bloke.

I think Steve Charlton was rescued from the car accident in which Ridley Lamb and Alan Merrigan were drowned in about 1994.

Reading about Van der Looeg, he owned a very fast two year old called Communication, which I remember winning a few quid on, maybe about 1970.

collywobble - Owned by Van Der Ploeg, trained by L.Dale at Epsom and ridden by Eddie Hide, Communication won at 100-7 at York on May 12, 1970

Thanks Whit, 1970 eh? I was 17. I think Communication won more than once.

Thanks Mister E - who rode I Say when it won the Coronation Cup? It wasn`t Duncan Keith.

Thanks for that piece of trivia blackbarn - didn`t know that Rubstic and Kildimo were half brothers.

No one remember the Redcar specialist owned by Van der Ploeg in the 70s ? Fire---- something or other maybe, but not sure.

^ Fiery Coin won the Andy Capp Handicap at Redcar.

Fiery Coin was trained by F.Carr and ridden by L.C.Parkes

Alan Daly rode over 200 winners between 1992 and 2009 from some 3,500 rides.

He is now a firefighter with the Surrey Fire & Rescue service.

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The above addresses show Alan as a jockey, as a firefighter and the racecard for his first ever ride on Aug 20 1992

remember banks naming several horses after famous footballers of the time,i remember billy bremner winning on just about my first visit to york,think it was the day brigadier gerard got beat.he also had a decent northern handicapper with carr which he named cynically adorable cyril after the then laddies boss cyril stein.

hi paulbu,banks must have just about quit the northern scene when i started racing regularly (as soon as i left school!) although i remember the billy bremner day at york with punters walking around with badge "john banks is my bookie".talking of carr i'm sure plenty will remember a chaser of his from the northern scene - eborneezers double,also reg spencer had horses with him.

good old stockton,i remember the last time i was there bumped into an old girl friend,asked what she was doing there,she said she was there to see her mum's horse run,it finished down the field in a 2 y o maiden,it was called soba! don't think eborneezers was banks's,pale yellow in the colours i think.

Ged, Banks didn't always get it right when fielding against a horse and if the Life reported that he had opposed LDV on his racecourse debut, then he probably did. Newmarket was a bit out of the way for me.

thanks tambourineman..i knew they were connected somehow , the curragh was one of my fav meeting back then , sure to be found there most meeting...

at least he got that right....

Good thread this workrider, not many on here nowadays, well done.

MM



IMMY LINDLEY is telling another anecdote. He sits there like Scheherazade, reeling them off one after another. It's an entertaining one - they're all entertaining ones - and as the story unfolds so a smile spreads across his face as some small jolt of recollection brings the past to life.

Lindley's life has certainly brought him a great deal of pleasure and he makes a point of saying that some of the best advice he's been given was to appreciate the joy in life, to make the best of it and take the best from it.

Had his career path taken a different turning here and there it would have brought him far more reward than it eventually did, but you'll search in vain for any bitterness, although in certain cases he'd be forgiven it. He concentrates instead on the good days - and there were few as good as a rainy afternoon at Ascot 51 years ago when a big bull of a horse well named Aggressor upset the odds in the King George, although Lindley's first experience of the colt was not particularly auspicious.

"The first time I rode him was in the Solario Stakes at Sandown," he says. "We were walking down the rhododendron walk, and in those days the back wall wasn't so high and there was a bandstand on the other side.

"Well, he went up over the wall and into the bandstand. The conductor stopped and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing there, which was a tough one to answer.

"Then the horse turned around, jumped down about a four-foot drop and skidded through the peat covering the path. I thought he must have spread a plate at the very least but he was fine, took it all in his stride - and he won the race by five lengths. After that his owner wanted me to ride him in all his races."

Aggressor, trained by Jack 'Towser' Gosden, was a high-class two-year-old but was not entered in any Classics, and the prospect of riding him was the lure that kept Lindley from pursuing his nascent career over hurdles. It took the big colt three seasons to reach his peak but the wait was worth it.

"Training was different in those days - if Towser had a mile-and-a-half horse he'd gallop him a mile and a half every week," says Lindley.

"And I think that was right. These staying horses today never work beyond six furlongs, which is no good for building lung capacity. Anyway, three weeks before the King George Towser - he trained at Lewes - put him on the gallop called Home Right Through, which went from Lewes prison to the racecourse and down to the five-furlong start.

"He had two lead horses and Towser arranged a horse to jump in and take me through the last half-mile. I remember it was a good horse - he'd be 100-rated today - but we left him for dead in the last two furlongs."

Aggressor was ready, but few would hear of defeat for the brilliant grey filly Petite Etoile, winner of the Oaks, Sussex Stakes and Champion Stakes the previous season. She would go off the 2-5 favourite under Lester Piggott, but conditions would not be in her favour.

"The weather was fine and we were all worried because Aggressor was a two-stone better horse on soft ground," says Lindley. "Then it rained, and it rained, and it rained. I thought someone would start building an Ark. On King George day water was running down from the winner's enclosure into the weighing room.

"I told Towser that Petite Etoile was best at a mile and a quarter, and that I had to try to stretch her, take her on. In the early stages I was in a lovely position, third or fourth with Lester behind me, and Harry Carr eased off the fence to let me go up behind Roger Poincelet on the leader.

"Turning into the straight I wanted to get out and begin to stretch the filly up the hill. As we took the bend Roger gave me about four inches of daylight, so I kicked Aggressor into the gap and bang, we were in front. These days the cameras might have got me into trouble ... "He took off like Pegasus and we were committed, had to go for it. He quickened up but suddenly I saw this grey head right on his quarters, so I gave him one smack and I felt him tense up and lengthen, his old head dropped and he found more for me.

"It was the limit of the filly's stamina and we held her off by half a length. Afterwards, Lester blamed the man who mowed the grass!" Aggressor was Arc-bound until an 11th-hour accident, when he reared over in the stable yard and pulled all the muscles in his back, bringing forward his retirement. It was the first in quite a depressing list of whatmight-have-beens for Lindley, whose struggle with his weight conspired against his winning championships like his almost-exact contemporaries Joe Mercer and Lester Piggott.

LINDLEY was heavy (for a jockey, obviously) but very strong, his three Classic wins coming in photo-finishes when his power from the saddle proved crucial. In the mid-1950s, after a trip to India, his weight had spiralled out of control and he flirted with riding over jumps without ever becoming overly enamoured of it, finishing third in the 1958 Champion Hurdle on Retour De Flamme before making a concerted effort to reignite his career on the Flat.

"I used to have a poached egg and a little bit of chicken breast for supper, and a small glass of white wine," he says.

"The only other fluid that passed my lips all day was the water off my toothbrush. My wife Pat was such a great help, she never used to eat in front of me. Maybe she had bars of chocolate after I went to bed.

"I don't eat much even now - not used to it - and I'm my natural weight, about 10st 5lb. I do quite a lot of walking, usually a couple of hours a day."

He started young, the three-year-old Lindley getting his first taste of life on horseback on the pony that pulled the milk cart in Eastbourne. His father liked a gamble, thought it would be good to have a man on the inside, and so Lindley went for an apprenticeship with Tom Masson down the road at Lewes.

Masson was a genius with problem horses and according to Lindley once taught one of the Queen's horses to curtsey for its owner. Sometimes it's hard to know whether the anecdotes borrow from the apocryphal or the actual.

They come thick and fast, about driving the young John Gosden to school in a white Austin Healey, about shooting with the patrician guardians of the old school who called him Lindley and never Mister or Jimmy, about being given Jim Joel's Purdey shotguns. He is in full stride, the names of Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, Lord Carnarvon, Bruce Hobbs, Ryan Price, Harry Carr and Scobie Breasley seasoning the narrative with a sepia tint. And now back to the horses.

Loyalty was the other great restrictor of Lindley's career. He rode 1966 Derby winner Charlottown in all his races at two but had to partner third-placed Black Prince at Epsom after being unable to extricate himself from his retainer with the colt's owner. That was bad, but not the worst.

"Royal Palace broke my heart," he says. "I had a gentleman's agreement with Jeremy Tree for years, but when Lester and Noel Murless went their separate ways Noel wanted me to ride for him.

"I should have been harder. It was the best job in the world. I told Jeremy, but he said I'd promised to ride for him. Then I heard that Jim Joel wanted me to take the job because he thought he'd win the Derby with Royal Palace.

"I went back to Jeremy but he told me he had four in the Derby and I'd ride one of them, although none of them would have won an egg-andspoon race. So Noel got George Moore instead. It was hard to take."

Tree repaid Lindley's loyalty with scorn the following season, parachuting Piggott in to ride Ebor fancy Tiber despite Lindley recovering from a broken back in time to take the mount. The horse was beaten; Lindley had justifiably severed his ties with Tree by then anyway.

AFEW years later his career came to a hugely premature close at just 39, his talent evident and widely respected but never accompanied by the string of big wins it merited. There was one last hurrah 15 years later, riding to victory over the likes of Lord Oaksey, John Francome and Bill Smith in the popular but too-short-lived Maktoum private sweepstakes at Ascot.

"What got me in the end was not having enough fluid," he says. "There were no dope tests in those days and I took a Lasix pill every morning which, combined with no fluid intake anyway, made me pee like that [and he points to his glass of red wine].

"A kidney expert advised me to pack up. Then, out of the blue, poor Clive Graham was involved in a car crash and the BBC needed a paddock man, and the Daily Mail asked me to write for them. I thought the time was right.

"I loved being a jockey, loved the horses, would have loved to have gone on for another ten years. I never wanted to be a trainer. Not many good jockeys have made good trainers. I was the wrong age, would have taken a few more years out of my life just learning the ropes."

His BBC days were characterised by solidity rather than flair, a safer pair of hands than, say, Willie Carson but very often sounding as though he was simply going through the motions.

"I don't miss it at all, I was never happy doing it," he admits. "Why did I do it for so long, in that case? The money, of course, and a man needs a focus, needs to have something to get up in the morning for.

"I was never a natural at it - when I started I knew everyone personally, when I finished I was talking about their sons and daughters."

Now Lindley retains a link with racing through his role as racing manager to Matthew Green and spends his happiest hours messing about in the Tanta Marella, a 35ft motor yacht that takes him up and down the Channel to Goodwood and to Deauville. He would have plenty of time to write his autobiography but says he's not bothered, and that's a shame.

Instead, as the seagulls wheel noisily about the masts in the marina, he pours himself another glass of red wine and settles back in his chair, sitting comfortably, ready to begin another story.

JIMMY LINDLEY CV Full name James Frederick Lindley Born Wembley, May 16, 1935 Apprenticed to Tom Masson, Lewes, Sussex, 1949-54 First winner Sweet Phoenix, Brighton, June 1, 1952 First big winner Damremont (1953 City and Suburban Handicap) British Classic winners Only For Life (1963 2,0 Guineas), Indiana (1964 St Leger), Kashmir (1966 2,0 Guineas) King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Aggressor (1960) Other notable winners Retour De Flamme (1958 Oteley Hurdle), Ambergris (1961 Irish Oaks), Gustav (1961 Middle Park Stakes), Double Jump (1964 Gimcrack Stakes), Track Spare (1965 Middle Park Stakes, 1966 St James's Palace Stakes), Charlottown (1967 Coronation Cup), Precipice Wood (1970 Gold Cup), Golden Orange (1970 Haydock Sprint Cup), Sun Prince (1972 St James's Palace Stakes), Tudenham (1972 Middle Park Stakes), Lassalle (1973 Gold Cup, Prix du Cadran), Jan Ekels (1973 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes), Ace Of Aces (1974 Sussex Stakes) Last winner Rouser, Newbury, September 20, 1974 Highest position in jockeys' table: 9th in 1963, 1964, 1965 Most wins in a season 71 in 1963 Compiled by John Randall

JIMMY LINDLEY was one of the very best jockeys of the 1960s and early '70s, and the big races he won included the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and three domestic Classics.

Weight problems restricted his opportunities, so he never won more than 71 races in a season or finished higher than ninth in the jockeys' table.

Those statistics do him scant justice and he did enough to establish himself at about the same level as his near-contemporaries Joe Mercer and Edward Hide.

After Lindley's successful apprenticeship, increasing weight forced him to ride briefly over hurdles and he partnered Retour de Flamme into third place in the 1958 Champion Hurdle.

He possessed rare strength in a finish and it is no coincidence that his three English Classic victories were all gained by a short head or a head on sub-standard winners - Only For Life (1963 2,000 Guineas), Indiana (1964 St Leger) and Kashmir (1966 2,000 Guineas).

Lindley gained his most famous win on Aggressor in the King George in 1960, beating Petite toile and Lester Piggott by half a length. The nearest he came to winning the Derby was in 1964, when his mount Indiana was cut down by Santa Claus's late burst and beaten a length.

Ironically, Lindley rode Santa Claus later that season when the Irish champion was beaten three-quarters of a length into second place by Prince Royal in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

He rode Charlottown in most of his races but not when that colt won the Derby in 1966; Lindley was on his other Derby-placed mount, Black Prince, who was third.

The best horses of his career were Santa Claus and Caro, though he rode those two champions only once each - when they became his only mounts to finish in the frame in the Arc. Caro was the best older horse in Europe when fourth to Mill Reef in 1971.

Lindley was often the first choice when trainers wanted a substitute jockey for their stable stars, like Santa Claus and Caro.

Dick Hern used him with success on Galivanter, Highest Hopes, Sun Prince and Sallust, and would have given him the leg-up on Brigadier Gerard in the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1972 had Joe Mercer not recovered from a plane crash two days before. He sometimes rode Britain's Horse of the Century at home.

Lindley rode regularly for Jeremy Tree (Only For Life and champion two- year-old Double Jump) and Jack `Towser' Gosden (Aggressor and Charlottown), father of John Gosden.

He gave up his battle with the scales in 1974 in order to succeed Clive Graham as BBC TV's paddock commentator.
COPYRIGHT 2002 MGN LTD

remember getting his autograph at redcar when he was coming back in with his saddle,i could have only been about 10 but i always remember thinking what a nice bloke he was.

Great article TM. Jimmy was too nice a guy. Should have told Tree to get lost and took Murless job. Still, says it all about the man. A class act. His book would be a terrific read if he ever done it.