Truth is as strange as Dick Francis’s fiction. Newbury’s meeting on Saturday when, in a bizarre accident, two horses were electrocuted in the parade ring was a tragic and hideous experience. Those who heard the dying squeals of Andy Turnell’s Marching Song will never forget them. It was all the sadder because it should have been a day for us all to celebrate Nicky Henderson’s achievement the day before of clocking up 2,000 winners as a trainer, an achievement he might well have underlined by winning the Totesport Hurdle, the richest handicap hurdle in Europe, with one of his three contenders. Instead, racing was quite rightly abandoned after the first race by the Newbury stewards.
A few other trainers have managed bigger totals. Martin Pipe, who retired at Nicky’s current three score years, won 3,930 over jumps and Arthur Stephenson 2,644. But Nicky’s Seven Barrows yard in Lambourn has always concentrated on quality, a fact that will be underlined when he passes Fulke Walwyn’s all-time record of 40 winners at the Cheltenham Festival, the Olympics of the jumping game. With the strong hand he holds it could even happen this year.
Nicky would be in the running for the best-tempered trainer in racing and he commented on the 2,000: ‘It’s nice to get it out of the way. But I’ve a friend down the road, B.W. Hills, and he’s on 3,000. You can think again if you think I’m going after him.’ Having had Nicky’s assistance in writing my biography last year of Barry Hills, I have also enjoyed talking to him in the course of putting together my centenary history of the Festival, due out shortly, especially about his five Champion Hurdle winners.
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