'His cut-throat mentality was unmatched in the history of the turf'

Lester Piggott was too busy to visit the cinema in his youth. The teenager whose life was consumed by racing missed out on the golden era of Hollywood westerns, in which fabled gunslingers roamed across new frontiers.

Those 1950s productions were a metaphor of Piggott himself. He was the cold-eyed marksman who never blinked, and who took no prisoners.

Piggott in his pomp was a supercharged fusion of fearlessness and soaring ambition in an era when, like the Wild West, race-riding was a near-lawless preserve. No jockey better espoused the concept of every man for himself.

If jockeys who followed him enjoyed periods of dominance, none ruled over the weighing room with the same iron grip. Piggott’s lust for victory was as insatiable as McCoy’s, his saddle skills as sublime as Dettori’s, his cut-throat mentality unmatched in the history of the turf. He thought nothing of approaching a jockey he’d just displaced from a big-race favourite to ask how to get the best from the horse.

Lester Piggott, legendary jockey and nine-time Derby winner, dies aged 86

There was a similarly steely aspect to his facial features: inscrutable and unemotional, he wore the haunted, dead-pan look of a loner. Yet a post-war Britain still reeling from austerity took him into their hearts.

He was the working-class hero who confronted aristocratic officialdom, and whose hypnotic brilliance conferred on him an authority he wasn’t spoon-fed at birth.

The way Dettori holds racing in the palm of his hand today pales by comparison with Piggott’s universal allure. This was down in part to racing’s enduring popularity when a teenaged Piggott emerged from the long shadow of Sir Gordon Richards in the mid-1950s.

However, Piggott’s aura was such that he singlehandedly maintained racing’s high profile within Britain’s sporting firmament. The advent of May would see sports editors ask a single question of their racing correspondents: which horse would Piggott ride in the Derby?

Intrigue surrounded him, while his standing with the public was enhanced by the quality punters treasure above all others. He rode to win at all costs. Legions backed him blind with a singular conviction. And during a race, the silhouette of Piggott perched high in the irons while jockeys around him lowered into the drive position told of one certainty. Victory was imminent.

Not this time Lester: hot favourite Petite Etoile (right) is beaten by Aggressor after repeated deliberate interference in the 1960 King George

This enduring image assumed a greater visual impact for Piggott’s height. He was unusually tall at a shade under 5ft 8in; hence his alias as ‘The Long Fellow’. And he was never short of a sharp one-liner. Asked why he rode with his backside thrust high above the saddle, he replied: “I’ve got to put it somewhere.”

Piggott’s cult status was embellished by an economy of words. He spoke so few that his audience hung on every one. It is arguable whether he was born a winner but he would emerge as one by the time his parents finished with him.

His mother, Iris, hailed from a long line of jockeys and her abiding memories were of those who struggled. As the late Sir Peter O’Sullevan, a long-standing friend of Piggott, put it: “Iris put the brakes on Lester all the time when he was a child. As a Rickaby, she had seen jocks fall by the wayside. She was determined the same wouldn’t happen to her son.”

Father Keith, a jockey-turned-trainer, was just as unyielding. “If Keith was coming to the last in a hurdle race and was lying 14th of 15, he’d put the jockey behind him through the wings as a matter of course,” O’Sullevan said. “He encouraged Lester to do the same. He wanted to bring up a hard son to do the job.”

The parameters with which Piggott must be appreciated were best amplified by his contemporaries, among them Joe Mercer and Jimmy Lindley. Both spoke about their rival with unreserved affection.

They concurred that Piggott’s talent was other-worldly, yet in conversation each of them occasionally lowered his voice, as people do when the memory of a grave injustice perpetrated on them resurfaces from the depths.

Every jockey who rode against Piggott was similarly seared. So there was more than a hint of relish in Lindley’s voice when he related how Piggott came to be beaten on Petite Etoile in the 1960 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, which Lindley won on Aggressor.

Scobie Breasley and Geoff Lewis had been independently affronted by Piggott and combined to take their revenge. In the days when patrol cameras on racecourses didn’t exist, Breasley and Lewis repeatedly interfered with Piggott on the 2-5 favourite as Lindley, up ahead of them, set sail for home.

“To be fair to Lester there was not a single word of complaint afterwards,” recalled Lindley, speaking before his own death earlier this year. It was a mark of the man that he could take it as well as dish it out.

Dish it out he did. Darrel McHargue responded to being jocked off 1984 St Leger favourite Commanche Run by saying he would be playing tennis on the day of the race. Come that day, the heavens opened. When Piggott was asked whether the rains would affect Commanche Run’s chance, he replied: “No, but it will ruin McHargue’s tennis.”

The man born on Guy Fawkes Night in 1935 certainly had an explosive streak. He was 12 when he rode his first winner, just 18 when he rode the first of his nine Derby winners.

Everybody has their own favourite Piggott moment. To this eye, the super-aggressive ride with which he won the 1984 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Teenoso was a masterpiece. It took Sun Princess’ pacemaker fully four furlongs to catch up with Piggott, who then sent Teenoso back to the front with fully half a mile remaining.

Teenoso: 'I thought Lester had taken leave of his senses, such was the pace he went off at,' said Julian Wilson of the 1983 Derby winnerCredit: Gerry and Mark Cranham

The headlong gallop looked far too punishing to sustain but Piggott and Teenoso were never headed thereafter. There was incredulity in the voice of BBC anchorman Julian Wilson, who exclaimed: “This was the most amazing race because I thought Lester had taken leave of his senses, such was the pace he went off at.”

Examples of Piggott’s finesse were as abundant as the machine-gun whip finishes he was renowned for. He excelled on the aforementioned Petite Etoile, a notoriously difficult filly, while his tender handling of Crepello, on whom he won the 2,000 Guineas and Derby in 1957, was that of a man who instinctively understood the colt’s brittle constitution.

Crepello made just two starts at three before he broke down ahead of the St Leger. In contrast, Piggott was hard as nails. In 1981 he rode Fairy Footsteps to win the 1,000 Guineas with 32 stitches in the ear he almost lost when a horse dived under the stalls with him at Epsom six days earlier.

Piggott felt a different kind of pain in 1987, when he served one-third of a three-year prison sentence for tax evasion. What hurt even more was the retraction of the OBE he’d been awarded 12 years earlier. He was so upset that O’Sullevan made direct representations to the Queen on Piggott’s behalf, all to no avail.

There would be one more glorious swansong when Piggott, by now aged nearly 55, rode Royal Academy to win the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Mile for his long-time ally, Vincent O’Brien. It spoke volumes about his natural affinity in the saddle but his legend is best encapsulated in the words of Steve Cauthen, the crack US jockey who rode in Britain for 13 years from 1979.

“Lester was known as ‘JC’ in the weighing room,” Cauthen said. “He could walk on water.”

Lester Piggott:

Lester Piggott, legendary jockey and nine-time Derby winner, dies aged 86

Obituary: child prodigy who blossomed into a riding legend and statesman

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

'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