Farewell to the greatest ever jockey

In racing’s record books 2022 will be remembered especially for Alpinista’s Arc de Triomphe and Baaeed’s all-round brilliance. But it was the year, too, in which we lost the sport’s most popular owner, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and the greatest ever jockey, Lester Piggott. His figures still astound. Lester won 30 British Classics including an unrivalled nine Derbies. His 116 winners at Royal Ascot included 11 in the Gold Cup and in all he won 4,493 Flat races. Nobody but Lester could have beaten Rheingold in the Derby as he did on Roberto. But what I will always remember was his victory in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Mile. Five years after retiring and only 12 days back in the saddle following his gaoling for tax offences, he rode a reluctant Royal Academy to win with a sweetly timed long sweeping run. Not one to waste words, his post-race comment was: ‘You don’t forget.’

Trawling this year’s racing literature offerings, most had a Lester story and the amiable David Smalley, maths lecturer-turned-starting price reporter and veteran of the racecourse press room, included one in his book of memoirs, A Head Full of Jolly Robins (Bound Biographies for a Motor Neurone Disease research donation). A Brighton bookie pal offered David, who seems to know everyone in racing, a lift in his plane to Deauville where Lester emerged from the weighing room to hand the pal £100 worth of francs, telling him to put the money on French jockey Freddy Head: ‘He’s a certainty in my race.’ The rest of them followed the tip only for the Frenchman to finish like a train but too late. Lester, muttering ‘he couldn’t ride an effin donkey’, refused to pay a share of the taxi back to the plane.