The long, hot summer of 1976 and its link to a very current pedigree

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With Britain set to sizzle in record temperatures over the next few days, causing the cancellation of several race meetings, I had planned on collating bloodstock industry members’ reminiscences of the country’s famous heatwave of 1976, when the mercury exceeded 30°C for 15 consecutive days, in this morning’s email.

So I set about calling some of the – how shall I put this? – more seasoned breeders and bloodstock agents in my phone book, hoping to hear evocative stories of cracked paddocks, water shortages and swarms of ladybirds, perhaps with some colour of the age thrown in; a space hopper here, a pair of platform boots there.

Alas, my correspondents let me down. I’ll be charitable and say that all the wonderful experiences they have gathered on the racecourse and in the sales ring over the years, along with their deep knowledge of pedigrees and rearing horses, has left little space in their memories for the relatively insignificant matter of some unseasonably warm weather 46 years ago.

Paul Thorman of Trickledown Stud happened to be in New Zealand during that hot spell, and only vaguely remembers receiving letters from home describing the unusual temperatures, while Jinks James of Brookside Stud has little recollection of those months and thinks he must have been too busy enjoying the break from racing that jump jockeys like him used to be granted from June to August.

Bumble Mitchell has good reason to recall the summer of 1976 as it was when she was preparing to move into the farm in the Lincolnshire Wolds from which she still runs her successful breeding and boarding business, but she says the heat didn’t cause much more bother than making driving fence posts into hard ground a rather unpleasant undertaking.

Badger Pritchard-Gordon, then a partner with Keith Freeman in his bloodstock agency, is another for whom the year 1976 is burnt into his memory, but then if it wasn’t he’d be in trouble – it’s the year he married his wife Sandy. His recollections of the heatwave are more vague although he does say, with a pointed reference to some of the more scaremongering weather warnings in the last few days, that everyone got on with their business and looked very healthy.

Just as I was about to give up on writing about that summer of 1976 in today’s communiqué, as I had no vivid firsthand accounts of events to show for four phone calls, the wise Badger reminded me of an unusual episode in racing that did occur that year because of the extraordinary temperatures. It’s a story that has had repercussions for breeding down the ages, into the bargain.

This was the era before polytrack surfaces, and there were only a few wood-chip gallops in existence, so the prevailing drought conditions made exercising horses a difficult enterprise.

To that end, Jeremy Tree sent a pair of more fragile horses owned by Jock Whitney from Beckhampton in Wiltshire – now the base of Roger and Harry Charlton, of course – to a young Michael Stoute in Newmarket, so that they could complete their preparations for their later-season targets on better ground or wood chip.

Tree’s idea, hailed at the time by the distinguished racing journalist Tim Fitzgeorge-Parker as “brainy and unselfish”, resulted in a Cambridgeshire victory for Intermission and a Jockey Club Cup success for Bright Finish in the space of just a fortnight that autumn.

Stoute had already proved himself one to watch by sending out the sprinters Alphadamus and Blue Cashmere to win big pots, but his handling of Intermission and Bright Finish really cemented his status as a trainer on the up.

In fact, owner Sven Hanson was so impressed by the appearance and demeanour of Bright Finish at Newmarket that he sent Stoute four yearlings he had recently bought – one of which was a Petingo filly who turned out to be the trainer’s first Classic winner, Oaks heroine Fair Salinia.

Sir Michael Stoute: a key part in the taleCredit: Edward Whitaker

And what of those two high-class horses who were moved between stables due to the 1976 heatwave?

Bright Finish, a son of Nijinksy and Irish 1,000 Guineas winner Lacquer, returned to Tree and won the Yorkshire Cup in the following year, before departing for Australia to stand at Lindsay Park Stud. He appears to have achieved little in that role, and was later sent to Japan.

Intermission left a far more lasting influence after being retired on a high not long after the Cambridgeshire, though.

The daughter of Stage Door Johnny and Blue Seal Stakes winner Peace, making her a half-sister to Coronation Cup victor Quiet Fling, produced a few largely inconsequential foals for Whitney before his death in 1982 and she was bought as a nine-year-old by the still emerging Juddmonte Farms for 410,000gns from the dispersal of the breeder’s stock later that year.

Intermission produced six winners for Khalid Abdullah’s operation, headed by Hackwood Stakes winner and 1,000 Guineas third Interval, who became the ancestress of top-notchers Continent and Zambezi Sun; and US Grade 2 scorer Interim, who produced the Group/Grade 1-placed pair Midships and Principal Role.

Juddmonte also acquired the 16-year-old Peace as part of a private purchase of a package of Whitney’s mares in 1982. She had bred five stakes winners up to that point – Armistice Day, Peaceful and Peacetime in addition to Intermission and Quiet Fling – and had no more to give her second owners, but she did leave them some highly productive daughters.

The Listed-placed Balabina became the dam of stakes winners Bal Harbour, Bequeath and Binary, while her winning full-sister De Stael, also by Nijinsky, produced multiple US Grade 1 winner Wandesta and three other stakes scorers in De Quest, Source Of Light and Turners Hill. The Group 1-winning siblings Byword and Proviso, plus recent Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud runner-up Baratti, are all members of this exceptionally fruitful family.

This current heatwave might give Stoute pause for thought about that long, hot summer of 1976, even if others have only hazy memories of it. Not least because his current stable star, Derby hero Desert Crown, is a maternal great-grandson of Binary and is thus a relation to Intermission, the filly he was entrusted with preparing when the lack of rain turned her home turf too hard to handle.

What do you think?

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Bred and owned by Newsells Park Stud, he is a Siyouni half-brother to German St Leger winner Ispolini, Park Hill Stakes runner-up Vivionn and Listed-placed Playful Sound, out of Giants Play, a Grade 2-winning daughter of Giant’s Causeway and Fillies’ Mile scorer Playful Act.

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