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13 Mar 15
12:15
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09 May 05
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Crikey, even Denman sat in behind Neptune Collonges if i remember correctly.
I was drunk Angel. I just remember seeing the monster tanking along and mine trailing in his wake. A proper performance.
The Wardrobe's finest hour. A cavalier ride. Threw it at every fence. Very brave .
Bregawn that`s who Coneygree reminds me of.
Cheers Geoff
Cheers Geoff
Arkle certainly made most if not all in his last two wins.
Tied Cottage ? And yes I know he was disqualified later.
Tied Cottage ? And yes I know he was disqualified later.
As good as Willie Mullins is he will never have the 1st 5 in a Gold Cup.
Then again no one else ever will.
Then again no one else ever will.
Bregawn that`s who Coneygree reminds me of.
Good judge that man.
Good judge that man.
An interesting read ref Bregawn (not my words) .....
Many people can remember where they were when they heard the news of the death of President Kennedy, or when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, or when Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street. I know exactly where I was when I saw Bregawn win the Gold Cup.
It was six o'clock in the morning, and I was sitting on the sofa in our living room in Falmouth, down at the dark end of Cornwall. That's how races were watched in those old days.
We set the video for the racing, my father being at work and me at school, and the evening then became like the episode of The Likely Lads in which James Bolam and Rodney Bewes desperately tried to avoid finding out the result of the football match later to be shown on TV.
Dad liked to watch the racing when everyone else had gone to bed, which meant that every news bulletin had to be watched with a finger hovering over the remote control in case Angela Rippon crashed into a swift resume of the afternoon's events before moving on to the Falklands conflict or the miners' strike. It also left me the only option of setting my alarm for an unpleasantly early hour so that I could watch the racing before school. That's how Friday, March 18, 1983 started for me.
Bregawn was the first horse who made a lasting impression on me; he was the flame that lit the fuse. In the first flush of interest, the names in the headlines and the shapes flickering across the screen attain legendary status beyond their capabilities.
Through a heady mix of the certainty of youth and the allure of a pastime bewitched equally with possibility and mystery, the first Saturday afternoon heroes cast a shadow that only deepens as the years go by.
In those days, jump racing was dominated by Michael Dickinson, who was the early-1980s equivalent of Martin Pipe and Paul Nicholls rolled into one. While Pipe was still only a trainer on the fringes and Nicholls a journeyman jockey, Dickinson was conquering the jumping world with his Yorkshire-based stable of stars.
Racing coverage was very different; there was the ITV7 and BBC3 on a Saturday, but nothing at all in midweek outside Cheltenham and Aintree. What little I knew of betting shops was confined to standing outside them and straining to hear the Extel commentary, trying to catch a glimpse of the handwritten results board as customers went in and out.
If the name you were looking for wasn't on the board, you had to wait until the following day to find out what had happened.
The sport itself was different. There was half as much racing as now, there was (heaven forbid) a gap between seasons. Racing was evolving slowly into a modern sport, but still played host to such archaic principles as concrete posts and wooden rails and 21-day declarations - and Cheltenham wasn't the commercial monster it is today, but just an exciting three-day meeting in March run on grass bleached pale yellow by the winter's depredations. Aintree was a dump, on the brink of becoming a housing estate.
Racing revolved around Saturday afternoons, so when an unremarkable looking chestnut gelding named Bregawn, trained by the all-powerful Dickinson, won three televised handicap chases on successive Saturdays in January and February 1982, it had a seismic impact on my narrow frame of reference. With that success at Kempton, following those at Haydock and Doncaster, Bregawn became my benchmark for equine endeavour, a position he was never to relinquish.
The following season, after a couple of warm-up wins, Bregawn - by now the Gold Cup runner-up - went to Newbury for the Hennessy, where under 11st 10lb he threw the race away at the last and then snatched victory back on the long run-in, rallying like a sprinter to catch and pass Captain John and win going away by three lengths. For me, in my usual spot on the sofa with a copy of the previous day's Sporting Life, it was simply confirmation of what I already knew: Bregawn was the best.
But he wasn't infallible, and that dash of vulnerability only endeared him to me even more. Little Owl beat him in a match at Haydock, and Combs Ditch beat him at Wincanton at the end of February. Dickinson evidently reckoned another race was required before Cheltenham, so he sent him to tiny Hereford 12 days before the Gold Cup, where he carried 11st 13lb and thrashed a motley crew in a race in which no SPs were returned. I didn't care; I didn't bet. As long as Bregawn won, that was fine by me.
And then there were five. The Famous Five. Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck, Ashley House, the first five home in the Gold Cup and all trained by Dickinson in a feat of unparalleled genius.
Bregawn took the race by the throat and galloped his rivals into the ground. Going to the third-last he was ten lengths clear, and although they swarmed around him at the last, he knuckled down on the run-in under Graham Bradley, who always looked just a shade too big for the little chestnut, to win by five lengths. For me, yawning as the thin spring sunlight edged round the curtains, it was the result I'd dreamed of.
It was the last great day for Bregawn. The following season he failed to win, displaying a reluctance to exert himself that came to a head at Wincanton in February, on the coldest day till hell eventually freezes over, when he dug his toes in just after halfway in the Jim Ford Chase and refused to continue, leaving the race to Burrough Hill Lad. At my request, the whole family had undergone the long drive from Falmouth to Wincanton (it must have been half-term). The journey seemed longer, much longer, on the way home.
He just didn't want to do it any more. He tried to pull himself up in the Gold Cup before consenting to plug on for sixth, but threw the towel in completely at Aintree. The following season, he moved to Paddy Mullins' yard in Ireland, which made his progress more difficult for me to keep tabs on. He returned for the Gold Cup (ridden by Willie Mullins), but he was thoroughly bad-tempered by then and was always well adrift until refusing at the last. I'd started betting by then, so was recruiting other temporary favourites, and after he ran down the field in the Irish Sweeps Hurdle in January 1986 (reluctant to race approaching third) he dropped off the radar completely.
Heroes are harder to find as you get older; I can count mine on the fingers of one hand, and Bregawn towers above them all.
He still turned up again here and there, in old racing clips and snatches of conversation, as the years rolled on his powers growing greater when viewed through the indulgent veil of nostalgia. He turned up again last Friday, for the final time, when a phone call from the office told me that the last of the Famous Five had followed the other four into eternity at the age of 33.
I'm glad he had a long life. I'm glad he had a happy retirement at Mylerstown Stud, supervising the mares and foals. I hope his temper improved with age. I put the phone down, and was suddenly transported back to the edge of the sofa at six in the morning, trying not to shout and wake the house, leaning forward to better see an ordinary-looking chestnut come galloping up the hill to win the Gold Cup.
Many people can remember where they were when they heard the news of the death of President Kennedy, or when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, or when Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street. I know exactly where I was when I saw Bregawn win the Gold Cup.
It was six o'clock in the morning, and I was sitting on the sofa in our living room in Falmouth, down at the dark end of Cornwall. That's how races were watched in those old days.
We set the video for the racing, my father being at work and me at school, and the evening then became like the episode of The Likely Lads in which James Bolam and Rodney Bewes desperately tried to avoid finding out the result of the football match later to be shown on TV.
Dad liked to watch the racing when everyone else had gone to bed, which meant that every news bulletin had to be watched with a finger hovering over the remote control in case Angela Rippon crashed into a swift resume of the afternoon's events before moving on to the Falklands conflict or the miners' strike. It also left me the only option of setting my alarm for an unpleasantly early hour so that I could watch the racing before school. That's how Friday, March 18, 1983 started for me.
Bregawn was the first horse who made a lasting impression on me; he was the flame that lit the fuse. In the first flush of interest, the names in the headlines and the shapes flickering across the screen attain legendary status beyond their capabilities.
Through a heady mix of the certainty of youth and the allure of a pastime bewitched equally with possibility and mystery, the first Saturday afternoon heroes cast a shadow that only deepens as the years go by.
In those days, jump racing was dominated by Michael Dickinson, who was the early-1980s equivalent of Martin Pipe and Paul Nicholls rolled into one. While Pipe was still only a trainer on the fringes and Nicholls a journeyman jockey, Dickinson was conquering the jumping world with his Yorkshire-based stable of stars.
Racing coverage was very different; there was the ITV7 and BBC3 on a Saturday, but nothing at all in midweek outside Cheltenham and Aintree. What little I knew of betting shops was confined to standing outside them and straining to hear the Extel commentary, trying to catch a glimpse of the handwritten results board as customers went in and out.
If the name you were looking for wasn't on the board, you had to wait until the following day to find out what had happened.
The sport itself was different. There was half as much racing as now, there was (heaven forbid) a gap between seasons. Racing was evolving slowly into a modern sport, but still played host to such archaic principles as concrete posts and wooden rails and 21-day declarations - and Cheltenham wasn't the commercial monster it is today, but just an exciting three-day meeting in March run on grass bleached pale yellow by the winter's depredations. Aintree was a dump, on the brink of becoming a housing estate.
Racing revolved around Saturday afternoons, so when an unremarkable looking chestnut gelding named Bregawn, trained by the all-powerful Dickinson, won three televised handicap chases on successive Saturdays in January and February 1982, it had a seismic impact on my narrow frame of reference. With that success at Kempton, following those at Haydock and Doncaster, Bregawn became my benchmark for equine endeavour, a position he was never to relinquish.
The following season, after a couple of warm-up wins, Bregawn - by now the Gold Cup runner-up - went to Newbury for the Hennessy, where under 11st 10lb he threw the race away at the last and then snatched victory back on the long run-in, rallying like a sprinter to catch and pass Captain John and win going away by three lengths. For me, in my usual spot on the sofa with a copy of the previous day's Sporting Life, it was simply confirmation of what I already knew: Bregawn was the best.
But he wasn't infallible, and that dash of vulnerability only endeared him to me even more. Little Owl beat him in a match at Haydock, and Combs Ditch beat him at Wincanton at the end of February. Dickinson evidently reckoned another race was required before Cheltenham, so he sent him to tiny Hereford 12 days before the Gold Cup, where he carried 11st 13lb and thrashed a motley crew in a race in which no SPs were returned. I didn't care; I didn't bet. As long as Bregawn won, that was fine by me.
And then there were five. The Famous Five. Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck, Ashley House, the first five home in the Gold Cup and all trained by Dickinson in a feat of unparalleled genius.
Bregawn took the race by the throat and galloped his rivals into the ground. Going to the third-last he was ten lengths clear, and although they swarmed around him at the last, he knuckled down on the run-in under Graham Bradley, who always looked just a shade too big for the little chestnut, to win by five lengths. For me, yawning as the thin spring sunlight edged round the curtains, it was the result I'd dreamed of.
It was the last great day for Bregawn. The following season he failed to win, displaying a reluctance to exert himself that came to a head at Wincanton in February, on the coldest day till hell eventually freezes over, when he dug his toes in just after halfway in the Jim Ford Chase and refused to continue, leaving the race to Burrough Hill Lad. At my request, the whole family had undergone the long drive from Falmouth to Wincanton (it must have been half-term). The journey seemed longer, much longer, on the way home.
He just didn't want to do it any more. He tried to pull himself up in the Gold Cup before consenting to plug on for sixth, but threw the towel in completely at Aintree. The following season, he moved to Paddy Mullins' yard in Ireland, which made his progress more difficult for me to keep tabs on. He returned for the Gold Cup (ridden by Willie Mullins), but he was thoroughly bad-tempered by then and was always well adrift until refusing at the last. I'd started betting by then, so was recruiting other temporary favourites, and after he ran down the field in the Irish Sweeps Hurdle in January 1986 (reluctant to race approaching third) he dropped off the radar completely.
Heroes are harder to find as you get older; I can count mine on the fingers of one hand, and Bregawn towers above them all.
He still turned up again here and there, in old racing clips and snatches of conversation, as the years rolled on his powers growing greater when viewed through the indulgent veil of nostalgia. He turned up again last Friday, for the final time, when a phone call from the office told me that the last of the Famous Five had followed the other four into eternity at the age of 33.
I'm glad he had a long life. I'm glad he had a happy retirement at Mylerstown Stud, supervising the mares and foals. I hope his temper improved with age. I put the phone down, and was suddenly transported back to the edge of the sofa at six in the morning, trying not to shout and wake the house, leaning forward to better see an ordinary-looking chestnut come galloping up the hill to win the Gold Cup.
He kept plenty back for himself salmon after the Gold Cup, but the race can do that to a horse. Winning the Gold Cup hurts and just about every horse remembers pain.
Just to add, hopefully Coneygree can put it far enough out of it`s mind to continue the upward curve but the Gold Cup can have a habit of dulling further enthusiasm.
We had a 2ml horse 1st time around allways traveled like the winner as soon as you asked it a question the brakes went on where it had burst.......prob run out of breath & never forgot it
I still have that momentus day on video. Michael Dickenson was my racing hero . What he achieved that day will not be repeated in my lifetime.
Wayward lad was my fav of the famous 5 he just had this wonderfull exuberance about him but unfortunately as Siviniaco Conti is finding out 3m2f round Cheltenham isnt for every horse never mind how many King George Chases you collect.
On the back of that Dickenson became "god" in our household, to the extent my late wife(god bless her) wrote to Michael Dickenson asking if I could visit the stables to see the horses. He wrote back and declined @ that moment in time as the stable was still busy but asked that i called him @ the beginning of August when the horses where back in. Rang him and arranged for me and my best mate to visit a couple of weeks later.
One of the best days of my life. Will never forget.
Wayward lad was my fav of the famous 5 he just had this wonderfull exuberance about him but unfortunately as Siviniaco Conti is finding out 3m2f round Cheltenham isnt for every horse never mind how many King George Chases you collect.
On the back of that Dickenson became "god" in our household, to the extent my late wife(god bless her) wrote to Michael Dickenson asking if I could visit the stables to see the horses. He wrote back and declined @ that moment in time as the stable was still busy but asked that i called him @ the beginning of August when the horses where back in. Rang him and arranged for me and my best mate to visit a couple of weeks later.
One of the best days of my life. Will never forget.
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