"Two I particularly remember Altesse Royal at 33-1 and Caergwrle at 50-1. We had some very good fillies at the time of Altesse Royal but I always felt she would be the best. She had a lot of nervous energy. She was pacemaker to the others but she never dropped away. It always stuck in my mind that she would be the one. She won the £1,000 Guineas the year Magic Flute would sit behind Altesse Royale and then come with a run and always looked to be her master. But Altesse Royal never dropped her head. I took 33-1 for the Oaks and I won a few quid. It gave me that bit of a nest egg. It wasn't any huge wodge or anything, it was hundreds rather than thousands. 'Murless horses. I concentrated on their home work. I never thought of myself as a gambler when I backed his horses - more of an investor. They were nearly all good-class animals and they were always trying. I made most of the money in Classic races at anti-post odds. You couldn't help backing winners when you worked for Sir Noel.
CHAPTER THREE
Pegasus Days
"He didn't have any legacy to set him up. He's done it his way and done it from the
bottom. He didn't take anyone's blueprint - he made his own. He follows his instincts. " Willie Carson on Clive.
Clive was 39 years old by then, he was a brilliant kaleidoscope illuminator for yearlings
and two-year-olds, bred and prepared each and every one for superstardom on the global, horseracing stage. That is if saved from being frightened to death beforehand by the bloodhorse illiterate...Clive's perspective on starting out as a trainer Clive Sketches' in his focus on a myriad of owners.
"It never sunk in until Lady Murless was talking about Sir Noel's retirement but then I thought for 23 years he had been a good gov'nor and I couldn't see myself having the same relationship with anybody else.
"We talked about it. I made a few inquiries and found that Pegasus was coming on the market. Jack Watts had moved to train in the north and it had been left empty and deteriorating. I went to see Chris Bakewell, who had it in trust for the family, and we agreed a three-year lease. When we went in, the lofts were full of chickens, the paint was peeling: the place had been let go.
Clive recalls:
"Willie Carson had moved into a new house at the end of the garden and he introduced me to Mr Gulrajani, an Indian banker with a lot of horses. Willie got him to send me a couple of horses and they were just platers. I started to train them.
"Pandit Gulrajani was the owner of the first winner Clive trained, VEDVYAS at Doncaster just ten days into the new season. There was a field of 25 for the Tuxford Maiden Stakes on April 1st 1972.
"It was a new adventure going to the races with the first horse I thought had a chance. VEDVYAS had been running in sellers the previous year. An apprentice, ROBERT YOUNG, had been riding him at exercise and the horse worked better for him than for other jockeys who rode out for me at the time. I thought VEDVYAS would win. I told the kid to ride him like he rode him work and not to pressure him much, not to go for the stick. Afterwards Frankie Durr (who finished third in the race on RIO D'OR) told me what a good race the kid had ridden. He asked if I had told him to sit quiet and when I told him I had, he said: If he had moved he would have been beaten.
" VEDVYAS, carrying 8st 7lb, just got up on the line under his apprentice rider ROBERT YOUNG beating MERCHANT OF VENICE, ridden by DUNCAN KIETH. Punters knew very little about C.E. Brittain, Newmarket' and VEDVYAS was allowed to start at 33-1, the first of a series of long-priced winners that were to decorate Clive's career. His winners share of the prize-money was £616.60.
"Ten day's later VEDVYAS won the much more important BP Mile Handicap at Aintree. He turned out to be quite a useful performer and at 50-1 in the 35-runner Cambridgeshire at Newmarket on September 30, this time ridden by lightweight DES CULLEN, he was beaten only a head and a nose in a photo- finish behind NEGUS (PHILIP WALDRON) and ROY BRIDGE (MICHAEL KETTLE). That was his best performance. CLIVE says CULLEN, was one of WILLIE CARSON'S most feared riders in a finish.
Clive says "You've got to take the animal into consideration. They don't come out of their boxes every day in the same frame of mind. They (the racehorses) are affected by different ground, by left-handed or right-handed courses, by different distances, and these captains of industry don't always appreciate that. Fellow trainer Sir Mark Prescott, who took over officially from Jack Waugh at Heath House just two years before the Brittain's opened up at Pegasus Stables, says that, apart from his talents as a horseman , Clive's good nature enables him to cope with owners that other were glad to see leave. 'His speciality was that he could manage difficult 'owners. '
CHAPTER FOUR
Enter Marcos Lemos
"They were dreadful bullies - horrible horrible people. People look back now through rose-tinted glasses and say what great horsemen they were? Well were they? Sir Mark Prescott on Newmarket in 1972.
SIR MARK PRESCOTT HAS THIS TO SAY:
"Newmarket was very different in 1972. It was for many at the lower end of racing a grim and often brutal place. Sir Mark Prescott, a man with a true feel for his local community, remembers it clearly at Heath House: 'Newmarket was a very, very different place then. I started officially in 1970. At that time there were 35 trainers in Newmarket and 850 horses Now there are 81 trainers and 2,500 horses.(2012) Pages 51 - 61.
"Everywhere was run-down. The owners could no longer afford to keep up the big studs as they had done and until the Arabs came on the scene and re did them they were pretty tired. I was unbelievably lucky to be given the chance to train here but it was all falling down.
Whether it was the war, whether that had something psychologically to do with it of whether it was entirely financial I don't know but it had a run-down feel about it. Newmarket was tired.
"The lads' accommodation was appalling. They were paid a pittance. Single lads serving a seven year apprenticed then. There were some great horsemen but there was an underclass of those men who were absolutely no good and they were allowed to get away with murder. It took a crisis to change that culture, the stable lads' strike of of 1975.
"The strike was very cathartic. In retrospect it was a ghastly, ghastly time. But it was very good because the owners realised they'd got to pay a proper rate for having horses trained.
"One of the problems was the lack of graduated wage structure in British racing. In many yards a man with 20 years' experience was getting no more than a 16-year-old starter, so the job tended to attract gamblers and drifters.
That was the Newmarket in which Clive set out as a trainer. But perhaps in those circumstances there was some advantage in being a trainer who had spent 23 years as a lad in someone else's yard.
JMC: LONG OUTDATED BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT SERVES NO ONE
BRITISH POLITICAL AND HORSERACING GOVERNMENT IMPOSTORS AT LARGE
Clive had a major task to bring Pegasus House and Stables back to life before it was ready to house horses in training at work.
The British impostors political and horseracing government's wooden horses.
BHA do not take the horses into consideration at all, whilst pretending to regulate British horseracing The methods they use to run this sport are all aimed to support hefty financial government gain. No matter at whose expense, in secret. Secret laws popped in to cover the tracks of evil past politicians and lawyers.
These governments show this to be the case both in Britain and in India (Richard Hughes) and (Martin Dwyer) both caught up unjustly when riding, competing in India. Made out to be crook's, when they are nothing of the sort. Both proven top global Group 1 horsemen. Treated, punished like criminals. Noted to public apologies
These government parties focus on horses, cattle, sheep and chicken all reared and slaughterhouse bound. End of story. What sufferance inflicted upon them whilst they are alive, matters not one jot to any of them. A financial means to launder huge amounts of other people's money at the animal's expense.
And we are fool enough to allow this long outdated evil political practice to continue on.
British governments are using monies they have stolen and are stealing from the British Equus Zone of horseracing every day, left on going over decades.
