A fascinating trip down memory lane via an interview with a training great from 60 years ago

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I shouldn’t give away trade secrets, but the best money I spend in the course of doing my job is £8 each month for access to the British Newspaper Archive. 

The website contains 82 million searchable digitised newspaper pages from both Britain and Ireland, going back to the 1700s. The only British national daily in the last quarter of the 20th century included seems to be the Daily Mirror, but that’s alright as it traditionally served racing fans better than other tabloids.

The only problem with the British Newspaper Archive is that I lose hours and hours scrolling through old racecards and results, admiring bygone stallion adverts and reading opinion columns on the state of racing and breeding in the past.

I recently stumbled upon one of my best finds yet. I can’t remember what words I searched to get there, but it is now safely bookmarked for future reference.

It is a remarkably informative interview with Paddy Prendergast conducted by the renowned Irish racing journalist and historian Tony Sweeney, featured in the Irish Independent in January 1964. It serves as another reminder that when it comes to industry issues and the art of horsemanship, there is nothing new under the sun.

Prendergast, then aged 53, had five Irish Flat championships under his belt and had just become the first trainer in Ireland to gain the British title, thanks to King George, Great Voltigeur and St Leger winner Ragusa, Oaks scorer Noblesse and the talented two-year-old filly Pourparler.

He had also become the first trainer to send out six winners of Classics in the same season in 1963, with Ragusa having also landed the Irish Derby. Gazpacho having taken the Irish 1,000 Guineas, Linacre having scored in the Irish 2,000 Guineas and Christmas Island having prevailed in the Irish St Leger.

The first fascinating insight in the interview is that for the high achiever Prendergast, even the best wasn’t enough. He was still smarting from some recent sources of misfortune.

Asked about his biggest disappointment of the preceding year, he replied: “I had my share of bad luck. I recall the injury sustained by Khalkis at the start of May which knocked him out of the Epsom Derby; the fact that Noblesse went heavily amiss before the Prix Vermeille at Longchamp and so forfeited her unbeaten record; and not least the unlucky defeat of Linacre in the valuable Champion Stakes at Newmarket.

“At the time Khalkis went wrong, he was a smashing good colt and I am convinced that he would really have extended Relko.”

An amusing historical relic in the article is Prendergast’s views on training horses in the last years before the introduction of starting stalls in Britain and Ireland.

“In recent years I’ve made a practice of training all my horses at the American-style starting gate at The Curragh,” he said. “Not only do they derive benefit for normal Irish starts but it is absolutely essential if one intends to send horses over to run in France. 

“In 1964 all races at the major French tracks, and not just the two-year-old events, will be started from stalls. I derived a good deal of satisfaction from the fact that my only two-year-old runner in France last season, Pourparler, was first away in the Prix Robert Papin.”

Then the interview gets really interesting for bloodstock industry members and enthusiasts in the modern day. Sweeney asked Prendergast, one of the biggest buyers of yearlings at public auction at the time, whether he had a recipe for success.

“Well, to begin with, it is useless to try and find yearlings that are completely free from fault,” the trainer declared. “Take the case of human beings, how many out of a thousand are perfect in looks, limbs and gait? So also it is a very rare horse indeed that is flawless in every respect. 

Irish Derby winner Ragusa

“What I look for is some striking attribute in a yearling. It may be the way he walks or his strength of bone or overall quality. But what really takes my fancy is a yearling who bears a resemblance to one of his distinguished ancestors.”

Regular readers might have heard an echo down the decades remembering my interview with Aidan O’Brien at the start of the year, in which he also declined to describe the perfect model.

“A horse could have a whole load of weaknesses but one major strength can carry all of the negative things,” the master of Ballydoyle told me in that piece. Uncanny.

Sweeney was evidently struck by Prendergast’s assertion that he liked a youngster to look like a famous forebear. “You carry a photographic memory of all the great horses, then?” he asked.

“Well, I like browsing through illustrated magazines and histories of the turf and I have, of course, seen almost all the great horses since the war,” was the reply.

“On my visits to Newmarket, I made a regular pilgrimage to Beech House Stud to see and study Nearco. This year, when attending Deauville sales, a yearling colt by Tehran out of a Nearco mare came into the ring that was the image of Nearco. I just had to get him and bid up to £7,000. He is called Newsrullah and I am hoping he will turn out to be one of my best.”

Newsrullah turned out to be far from Prendergast’s best, his finest hour coming with victory in the Ulster Harp Derby, but it’s pleasing to think that memories of Nearco informed his acquisition of later big race winners distantly descended from the Italian-bred breed-shaper, like Mistigri and Nikoli.

Perhaps not, though. Prendergast went on to tell Sweeney that he wasn’t always that concerned with pedigree, and often found value in favouring physique.

“Naturally, when one is buying fillies one has to pay attention to breeding for they will, in due course, be going to stud,” he said. “But my opinion is that one would be far better off going to sales without a catalogue and concentrating on individuals.

“Some of the best horses I ever trained came out of the bargain basement, not being bred in the purple. I bought both Thirteen Of Diamonds and Five Spots for less than £500, and they won me the Irish Derby and the Irish Oaks in the same year. 

“Around the same time I also picked up Windy City for 700gns and The Pie King in turn cost only 1,850gns [both smart sprinting two-year-olds of the early 1950s].”

Buyers who make their fortune by plucking unfashionably bred but athletically built youngsters from the sales ring are still a fixture of the bloodstock industry. That’s something that will never change.

Nor, depressingly, will concerns over the finances of the sport or the lure of countries with saner funding structures.

Asked by Sweeney what he regarded as the most essential turf reform, Prendergast responded: “The introduction of a Tote monopoly. The French and Americans have set us a headline in this matter and they are now the most prosperous racing countries in the world. Several of my owners also train in France and I fully appreciate the financial inducement to cut out their Irish interests.”

There is yet more cause to cry ‘plus ça change’ in the next question: “In view of the increasing difficulty in getting stable lads, do you think there is any alternative?”

Stable lads and lasses: hard to come by now, hard to come by thenCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

That said, Prendergast’s answer was as rooted in the early 1960s as the advert that was positioned next to the interview in the newspaper: ‘Never let it be said that Guinness is not good for you,’ it stated, inviting readers to sample the elixir of life at the Shamrock Lounge Bar in Wexford.

“My opinion is that there will be a growing employment of stable girls in this country,” said the trainer. “They are particularly good with fillies though less efficient with colts. I am speaking from experience for I have had several English stable girls in my yard and they had the ideal temperament for handling delicate, highly-strung fillies.”

It was the next section that really caught my eye, though. It is the most obvious example within the interview of how things really are different in the 2020s.

“Has there been any change in your stable policy in recent years?” asked Sweeney.

“Yes,” replied Prendergast. “I used to concentrate on two-year-old racing, but the emphasis has been switched to the older horses because that is where the big money is now to be won.  

“Ever since the introduction of the Irish Sweeps Derby with its £60,000 prize, there has been a sharp upward swing in the prizes open to three-year-olds and last season Ragusa alone won over £114,000. A two-year-old is doing exceptionally well to win a quarter of that.” 

Self-starter trainers making their name with cheaply sourced two-year-olds before moving on to more expensively bred Classic types from the sales or owner-breeder clients ought to be par for the course. 

But that natural order was disturbed by the end of the era of the owner-breeder and the subsequent rush to get wins into horses in order to make them pay their way or attract resale value, and the introduction of lavishly endowed sales races by auction houses to encourage buyers to reinvest.  

The elevation of two-year-old racing to become an end in itself from being a stepping stone to three-year-old achievement might have made financial sense in the commercial age but it hasn’t necessarily been in the best interests of the sport. 

It’s impossible to turn back the clock but at least more and more owners and trainers are recognising that increased demand from Australia and the Middle East for European horses who can race over a mile or middle-distances at three and beyond has made slower maturing yearlings more attractive. 

After a few more off-the-wall but intriguing questions, from which the reader found out that Prendergast enjoyed playing card games, but not poker as he lost too much money, that he wouldn’t take stock exchange tips from his financier owners James Mullion or Charles Clore, and that he would have been a lawyer if he hadn’t been a trainer, the interview concluded by asking what he planned for his old age.

“To keep on training winners,” he said. “When you retire from this game, Mr Senile Decay takes over, so I intend to keep him at bay as long as possible. After all, Atty Persse was training winners at 80 years of age.”

Sadly, Prendergast didn’t get to emulate Persse, as he died at the age of 69 after a long illness in June 1980, only a few days after Irish racing lost another of its great horsemen in Dan Moore and in the same month that his Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Nikoli, whose training was supervised by son Kevin, failed to give him a much longed-for success in the Derby.

Kevin Prendergast himself is however still sending out winners at the age of 92, his most promising one being Iowntheball, an unfashionably bred colt bought at a bread and butter sale for just €10,000. The apple obviously didn’t fall far from the tree.

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"I always thought Big Mojo was quite decent and the same applies to Mr Lightside, who ran an absolute blinder as well; there wouldn't be much between them, they're both pretty good two-year-olds who’ll be winning Group races,” says Mick Appleby as he reflects on a productive week at Glorious Goodwood.

Pedigree pick

Bold Impact, third to unbeaten Group 2-winning two-year-old Ancient Truth on debut at Newmarket, will likely be a warm order for the seven and a half-furlong maiden at Ffos Las on Tuesday (3.05), but newcomer Boubyan’s pedigree and price-tag suggests he can also be competitive. 

Trained by Andrew Balding for Imad Alsagar, he is a Churchill half-brother to six winners including Listed scorers Magical Dreamer and Piece Of Paradise, the last-named later becoming the dam of Listed-winning juvenile Al Qudra. 

His dual-winning dam Double Fantasy is by Indian Ridge and out of German 1,000 Guineas heroine Dakhla Oasis, who in turn was a Night Shift full-sister to US Grade 1 scorer Creaking Board and Group 3-winning sprinter Dyhim Diamond. 

Boubyan was signed for by Hugo Merry on behalf of Blue Diamond Stud at €140,000 during last year’s Goffs Orby Yearling Sale. 

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