‘I spent four weeks on life support . . . and the foal was in a bad way’ - the remarkable tale of an owner-breeder and his racehorse who both beat the odds

It was as if Letsbeatsepsis already understood he is a horse on an important mission for the greater good when he made his debut on King George day at Ascot.

The two-year-old had his own brush with death just a couple of months before the encounter suffered by his owner-breeder.

Having contracted sepsis, Patrick Moorhead decided that his Expert Eye colt could be named to raise awareness and some funds for victims of the condition, so a third-placed finish in the competitive Crocker Bulteel Maiden, for which he collected around £6,000, represents a decent start.

Moorhead, a leading antiques dealer who is based in Brighton, recounts how his experience spiralled from a trifling inconvenience to the truly terrifying within mere hours in such a vivid yet matter-of-fact way that it is more easily left to him.

"I went on holiday and did not feel 100 per cent," he says. "We got back on the Sunday and I had to go back to work in the warehouse on the Monday to meet a client, I was just helping to lift down some furniture and my arm was killing me; I thought I’d just twisted it lifting something awkwardly.

"I came home and when we walk our dog I hit a ball with the tennis racket and I couldn’t hit it, but I had no inkling at all. Thank God I woke up in the early hours of the morning and I said to my wife Heather, 'You’ve got to take me to hospital, I’m really unwell'.

"They put me in an observation ward, Heather left at seven in the evening and said she’d pick me up in the morning. I just wasn’t quite aware of anything, but then I don’t remember anything for a month after that. Heather got a call to say they might have to take my arm off.

Letsbeatsepsis (purple and pink, 3rd left) in action at AscotCredit: Edward Whitaker

"The sepsis infection started and all my organs fought against it. Basically, I spent four weeks in the high dependency unit on life support and then another three or four getting better."

The Moorheads, both longtime racing fans, have had horses with Gary Moore for around 15 years in an association which began when one of their first horses, Ebony Boom, moved to the family's nearby stable from Sir Henry Cecil. 

Perhaps their best has been Whinging Willie, who could find myriad ways of getting beaten under just about every one of Moore's children but registered eight wins, including the Apprentices' Derby at Epsom, and was a popular trooper in active service until the age of ten. 

Letsbeatsepsis is the first horse they have ever bred, having harboured the ambition to try it with Lady Morpheus, the winner of a couple of handicaps.

"It’s a hard game, lot of disappointments come with it, but we always wanted to breed a horse," says Moorhead. 

"When we retired Lady Morpheus I went back to the chap I bought her off at the Tattersalls foal sale, David Botterill, who had always kept in touch. We were very naive, we didn’t know where to start or what to do, but he helped us all the way along. 

"We went to Expert Eye and were very excited but when the horse was foaled I got a phone call from David up in Lincolnshire, who said it wasn’t looking good. They’d had to do an emergency caesarean, mum was in a bad way, the foal was in a bad way. 

"The emergency vets in the area were amazing, then she had to go to the specialists in Newmarket, Rossdales, who were even more amazing, and both of them pulled through."

Lady Morpheus returned to the National Stud and is now in foal to Lope Y Fernandez, while Letsbeatsepsis has made healthy progress of his own. The family hope to match his earnings for charity but were blindsided by him staying on so promisingly at odds of 80-1 behind the useful pair Our Terms and Back In Black at Ascot.

"It’s all come about very quickly," says Moorhead. "We went to see him only twice but Gary seemed to be very happy with him and decided to find him a race. 

"We didn’t expect him to be placed, or have to worry about where the money goes so early! It will go to good causes and we thought maybe for people who have been badly affected by sepsis but haven’t had the luck I’ve had.

"We beat a horse [Battaash's half-brother Al Misbar] who cost 1,500,000gns and it was a quality race. He might even improve for seven furlongs."

Whinging Willie was an eight-time winner for the Moorhead familyCredit: Mark Cranham

That isn't being put to the test immediately, with the colt declared to run over the same six-furlong trip at the Moorheads' local track, Brighton, on Friday

From a time when he believes he had "very little chance" of ever getting out of hospital, recovering from a considerable amount of internal trauma, Moorhead is back to normal, aside from some skin grafts to his arm. He counts himself particularly fortunate and is eternally grateful for his family support.

He has also read further into the causes and effects of sepsis, for which the statistics are alarming.

"It kills 48,000 people in the UK a year, nearly 1,000 people a week, and no-one really knows too much about it," he says. "We didn’t, and I thought it would be a nice way just to name the horse because he had his tough time and got over it, and so did I, and anything that helps to spread the news is a positive.

"They’ve got to match you with the right antibiotics, as far as I understand it. It’s very hard for the doctors, of course, it gets misdiagnosed sometimes and it can just be another infection. But I think there’s more and more learning about it now because it’s such a massive killer; worldwide it's 11 million lives a year.

"Every hour you save with sepsis you’ve got a better chance of surviving, so the quicker you get to hospital and get those antibiotics or whatever you need, it can really change things."

It sounds a more than good enough reason to cheer on both horse, and owner, in their future endeavours.

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