For unwavering acclaim over decades, Old Stoneface remains a matchless figure
Peter Thomas on the man who became synonymous with the sport of horse racing
At the risk of straining credulity to an uncomfortable degree, I've recently found myself pondering the similarities between Lester Piggott and Jimi Hendrix.
Not in the sense of lifestyle or dress sense – the Long Fellow was always more at home with a cigar and a smart grey two-piece than a floral blouse and a bandana – rather the universally high esteem in which they were, and are, both held.
Ask the rock cognoscenti, not to mention the man in the street, who was the finest guitarist ever to walk the earth, and Hendrix would invariably still top the list, more than 50 years after his death.
Put a racing fan on the spot and ask them for their idea of the jockey nonpareil – be they expert or just stepped off the Clapham omnibus – and Lester will be the hands-down winner, even among those who were barely out of nappies when the great man was in his pomp.
Of course, there are whipper-snappers who will offer up Messrs Dettori and Moore as alternatives, and middle-aged respondents who still rate Cauthen and Eddery as being right up there with Piggott, but for sheer staying power, for unwavering acclaim over the course of decades, Old Stoneface remains a matchless figure.
Some top sports figures fade from the memory and slip down the hit parade, but Piggott became remarkable in 1954 – when he rode his first Derby winner at the age of 19 – and remained so until he died. What am I saying? He'll be remarkable until we all die, and then some more.
You see, there are people who exist within a genre and dominate it, but then there are people who achieve acclaim beyond those confines and gain currency with the broader public until the notion of the sport without them becomes an unthinkable concept.
Piggott was already a 'national treasure' when I first clapped eyes on him, although he wasn't a national treasure in the same way as, say, Barbara Windsor or David Attenborough.
Not for him the worthy and loveable route to a place in our hearts; his was a lone furrow planted with a taciturn self-interest or, at best, a monosyllabic disregard for decorum.
He had his comic side, and the tales of his barbed wit, sociopathic leanings and fabled caution with money have attained the status of legend, but mostly he achieved transcendent greatness thanks to a talent that made him simply better than everybody else, fully aware of it and adored as a result.
Lester's love life wasn't without its deviations, but the longest running affair was the one he enjoyed with the housewives of Britain – or rather the one they rekindled every first Wednesday in June, whether he liked it or not.
It wasn't altogether fanciful on their part, these ladies with their pinnies, curlers and deep-seated need to back the winner of the Derby – Piggott won the race nine times and rode Epsom as if it was his back garden, after all – but the feeling persisted that they would have followed him into the abyss if he were riding Steptoe's horse rather than bluebloods trained by Vincent O'Brien and Maurice Zilber.
It was a relationship laced with mystery. It's not hard to understand why the great unwashed have fallen for Frankie Dettori, with his irrepressible, chattering, flying dismounting, Mediterranean charm, but Piggott had none of that.
He was gnarled and lined beyond his years, a bit deaf (although the degree seemed to alter depending on convenience) and utterly devoid of small talk; almost the man you wouldn't bring home to meet your mother – but the mothers loved him, as did the fathers, and their sons and daughters, for his relentless ability to bring home the bacon, at least when the bacon was sufficiently good and plentiful to make it worth his while.
His friends would tell of a warm, generous, charitable side to his nature – between admitting that they, too, had been undone by the great man – but that wasn't a side the general public seemed to want or need.
His value was as a ruthlessly successful sportsman who would use his hapless rivals as stepping stones, as he threw one after another into the river that separated him from what he believed to be another big winner. And his devotees lapped it up, relishing the devilry of it all as much as he seemed to be indifferent to it.
It's one thing to have a reputation for single-minded ruthlessness, however, and quite another to carry it off over the course of a long and exceptional career. Such monstrous self belief is all very well, but without results, without firm evidence that the belief is well founded, it can all unravel pretty quickly.
With Piggott, though, it never did unravel, even to the point where he came back at the age of 54 to put the pretenders in their place on that unforgettable day at Belmont Park in 1990 (when he won the Breeders’ Cup Mile on Royal Academy).
He was no longer at the peak of his powers, but the aura and the instinct were still intact, allowing him to persist until that other unforgettable day at Newmarket in 1992, when he renewed his old alliance with Robert Sangster – owner of 1977 Derby winner The Minstrel – to land the Champion Stakes on Rodrigo De Triano.
It was a revisitation of a golden era, with age making the resurrection even more unlikely than his own physique had made the first coming; because if God had truly intended to create the greatest jockey the world had ever seen, he surely wouldn't have made him two inches too tall and two stone too heavy, the way he did with Piggott.
Yes, the 11-time champion was bred for the role, with multiple and longstanding bloodlines of the turf reaching their confluence in his flesh, but the pedigree could only find an outlet for as long as he maintained an unnatural and often savage regime of dehydration, starvation and expensive cigars.
It was the kind of deprivation that had tragically snuffed out his legendary precursor Fred Archer, but Piggott seemed to settle into an uncomplaining acceptance of the lifestyle, as if it were a Faustian pact that enabled him to achieve all his professional goals for as long as he sacrificed any pretensions towards a normal existence.
From the outside, at least, he became a great jockey more than a functioning member of society, with the only balance remaining in his life being that which kept him in the saddle while all the forces of equilibrium stood and marvelled at the feat.
The stories of his dysfunction mounted up around him – the £5 ear and the £10 ear, the tweaking of Frankie Dettori's testicles, the ruination of Darrel McHargue's tennis, the lax attitude towards his fiscal responsibilities – without so much as a lawsuit from Piggott.
Perhaps he enjoyed the recognition, or more likely he had his mind on other things, two in particular: making money and hanging on to it.
In what he would surely have regarded as inconsequential terms, Lester was a bit odd, not one of us, a man apart. In essence, he was quite simply a jockey.
He was brave and intuitive, blessed with a deep understanding of the thoroughbred and an instinctive knowledge of what each individual was capable of, given the right man on top.
He didn't much care for the niceties of racing, but he cared enormously about being on the right horse and getting the right result when it really mattered.
He was, in short, unique. He was the best we've ever seen.
Lester Piggott:
Lester Piggott, legendary jockey and nine-time Derby winner, dies aged 86
The remarkable facts and figures behind Lester Piggott's career
In his own words: 'It was quite a bad punishment, wasn't it? It was almost inhumane'
Lester Piggott Q&A: a brilliant interview with the record-breaking champion
Appreciation: 'His cut-throat mentality was unmatched in the history of the turf'
'He was my idol growing up' - Mick Kinane on his admiration for Lester Piggott
Aidan O'Brien: 'Incredible man' Lester Piggott left unbelievable mark on us all
Racecourse brilliance and quieter moments: Lester Piggott in photographs
'Lester went wrong way round a roundabout to pass me! No wonder he was champion'
Nine Derbys, 30 British Classics and winners worldwide - Lester by the numbers
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