Brocklesby ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Bill Turners has been galloping since July....Catching Pigeons.

Did brocklesby once win the brocklesby ?

Anyone remember Provideo and Boca Raton? I'm giving away my age here.

1732

DIFERENT GRAVY 12 21 Mar 23 12:22 
1732




Wrong

An event called the Lincolnshire Handicap was established at Lincoln in 1849. It was run over a distance of 2 miles in August.

I wonder if I was thinking of Brondesbury perhaps ged,onlooker or anorak could confirm it would be between 1980 1987

Provideo was Bill O'Gorman trained.

Similar ffs!

Spindrifter 2yo that looked like a 4yo

I just looked it up I wouldn't have got it

Timeless Times another prolific 2yo.

I also doubt it 3 valleys

Before aw racing the saying always after the brocklesby that’s the best 2 yo seen this season

I also think they were close together Smirnoff around early 80s.

From The Free Library......

Still talking a good game; Whatever happened to Bill O'Gorman? The former leading trainer of prolific winners like Provideo and Timeless Times is now down to six horses

BILL O'GORMAN is anxious to ram the point home before cynics seize an opportunity to pass comment on his motive.

He wants it known he is certainly not brooding and bitter because he is no longer as successful as he once was. To ensure that message gets across, he repeats himself three times.

O'Gorman says just because he has stepped aboard a soapbox to pontificate about a range of racing issues this must not be interpreted as a bellyache about his own plight which, regrettably, has seen him whittled down to a mere half a dozen horses.

"Racing has been very good to me and I'm not moaning that I haven't as many here as I once did," he insists. "My remarks are not a venomous reaction."

I think your plea is understood, Bill. In terms of firepower, his freefall continues unchecked. You wonder if a parachute came his way whether he would reach out to grab it.

Seven Springs stables, off Newmarket's Hamilton Road, is a sumptuous yard he designed for 50.

O'Gorman is anxious to talk more of racing's future than his past, or indeed of his own future. Fair enough, but one cannot fail to contemplate that memories of glorious deeds must crash a good deal faster than they once did.

For this is the same Bill O'Gorman who not too long back was saluted as a master technician with the young horse, winning a record-equalling 16 races in a season with juveniles Provideo (1984) and Timeless Times (1990).

The same Bill O'Gorman who won nine with African Chimes, nine with Abdu, seven with Manor Farm Boy, seven with Superpower. Plus a cluster of leading prizes from Royal Ascot to Phoenix Park-many of them, like the Norfolk, Temple and Palace House Stakes, twice over.

"If owners wanted to send me a horse they would. They obviously don't," he says in resigned tone. "It was no coincidence that Provideo and Timeless Times both won 16 races. It would have been careless to do it twice."

Apart from rows of bolted top doors, there are no other telltale markers of the trainer's wane. His home is palatial and expensively adorned, there is no hole in his shoe leathers, no pointing of the Tesco trolly towards the reduced-item shelf.

Conducting a tour of home and yard, the phlegmatic O'Gorman, 50, explains most of what we see in one sentence. A sentence delivered with half a grin. "As Ron Smyth once said, thank God we got ours earlier."

What came later, to his horror, was a decision by several of his main owners to abandon the yearling sales in order to concentrate on breeding their own. His look tells the story they were equipped with the speed of camels.

The future is uncertain. "I'm just going through these half dozen I have here now, and then . . . well, I don't know. Maybe I'll lease out the yard. Maybe not.

"I've done well out of property. I've sold some horses to America. And, yes, I've been shrewd.

"I've also been completely brainless a lot of the time-though thankfully not all of the time. I've done plenty of things wrong. For instance, I turned down an offer from David Thompson to train for Cheveley Park Stud, and, of course, that was a most ludicrous thing to do. I was sent a horse by the Helena Springfield company. I sent it back.

"I also turned down Terry Ramsden when he was going well. I could have made a lot of money training for Terry. Mind you, I'd either have kept Terry out of jail, or been in there with him."

Never one to snare owners on the social circuit, or to exchange tittle- tattle with them in the racecourse bar, O'Gorman would prefer to leave the course after the last of his runners, with the intention of seeing the horses on their return to the yard.

Good for the horse; not so good for the business.

As we talk in the conservatory, daughter Emma is in the kitchen. It must be irritating that she lost the ride on Jack Berry's sprinter Bolshoi, especially as it was she who apparently recommended that the gelding would improve for being held up. Now, with the family's team so depleted, her future, too, is undetermined.

HER father says: "Emma has a pretty good record with almost 50 per cent of her rides making the first three. She faces the same problem as every girl jockey. If she rides a winner people will say it was a certainty anyway, and if she gets beat in a photo people moan it should have won.

"If an offer came from abroad I expect Emma would go off and ride there, or alternatively she may return to college. Her art is good. She's still a youngster and there's time for her."

O'Gorman may be short on horses, but he will never be caught short for a viewpoint on racing politics.

He has scripted a five-page document on issues ranging from the horse population-"we don't need another influx of bad horses anymore than Gordon Brown needs to expand the social services"- to claiming races, and a call for the late-entry system in major events to be ditched because it's so unsporting that the owner who had paid from day one should have to contend with the wealthy Johnny Come Lately.

Quoting the wise man who uttered 'don't seek reality, just put an end to opinions', O'Gorman states there are so many current opinions that everyone has lost sight of the reality. Then he adds his own opinion.

One of the core issues, he suggests, is that someone must define whether racing comes under the banner of sport or industry.

"If it's a sport we need to get back to some traditional values. If it's an industry it must be the only industry which supports another one-the betting industry-for virtually nothing.

"Someone needs to realise that competitive racing should imply a properly structured sport-not big fields of inconsistent horses running in low- grade handicaps at one end and a single family playing mind games at the other end."

While soapboxing such judgements may not charm him to potential owners, there was one apparent advantage. It sure seemed to make him feel a good deal better.

Seem to remember a horse called Nagwa who won a few on the bounce.