Robin Oakley: On why horse racing comes first and politics second

AS a much-respected BBC political editor, no one studied – or interpreted – the form at Westminster better than journalist Robin Oakley. Yet, to him, terms like ‘first the past post’ were not just about the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system. They were even more applicable to his real passion – horse racing.

“Growing up, the then Hurst Park racecourse near Hampton Court was at the end of the road in East Molesey where we lived,” he told The Yorkshire Post as he reminisced about his youth in the 1950s.

“I’d take my bicycle down to the end of the road, prop it against a fence, stand on the saddle, peer over the fence and watch the jockeys flash by in their colours and hear the roar of the crowd. It gave me an excitement like I’ve never had.”

Oakley, the voice of BBC politics from 1992-2000 during the rise of Tony Blair, is speaking ahead of the publication of his latest book Sixty Years of Jump Racing from Arkle to McCoy.

A labour of love written with Edward Gillespie, the innovative MD of Cheltenham Racecourse for 32 years, it charts National Hunt racing from the mid-1960s when the incomparable steeplechaser Arkle’s reign ended to the retirement of the 20-times champion jockey Sir AP McCoy in 2015.

At its heart is a series of insightful interviews with leading trainers that illustrate the sport’s evolution – people like Yorkshire’s very own Peter Easterby and Michael Dickinson who mean as much, if not more, to the author than the politicians that Oakley encountered on the Liverpool Daily Post and The Times before succeeding the BBC’s John Cole in 1992.

His respect for Easterby – the Ryedale farmer and lovable rogue saddled a record five Champion Hurdle winners from his Great Habton stables – is absolute. “It was a privilege to talk to him, one of the great names from my racing youth,” says the author, recalling Saucy Kit’s win in 1967 and then the dual successes of the mighty Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon. “He’s got a lovely way of slightly teasing you as he talks. He doesn’t give much away, but he’s got that twinkle...”

It’s the same with Michael Dickinson who saddled the first five home in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup from his family’s Harewood stables. “I could listen him talk for hours,” he says. “Like Martin Pipe, he has this incessant quest for further knowledge and experimentation and anything that might help horses to run faster.

“At this time, Ron Barry, Jonjo O’Neill and Tommy Stack were all champion jockeys based in North. What chance now? It’s not the trainers, there doesn’t seem to be the quality of rides. Particularly in the years of Easterby and Dickinson, the North was a dominant force. I don’t see quite why it has collapsed the way it has.”

Then the season-defining Cheltenham Festival was a benefit meeting for Yorkshire trainers. Now white rose runners, much diminished in number, head there more in hope than expectation.

“The trainer interviews are the meat of the book because they had some very interesting things to say,” says Oakley. “There’s the very science-based approach of Martin Pipe versus Paul Nicholls who wasn’t bothered much about weighing horses, though his horses have, of course, had a lot of wind operations to aid their breathing.

“It’s very insightful to see how things have changed. Nicky Henderson has these wonderful grass gallops at Seven Barrows but they’re not required. If you have five or six furlongs uphill, and a decent all-weather gallop, you can train racehorses anywhere.”

While legendary trainer Fred Winter’s Mandarin was Oakley’s favourite horse, and the pseudonym for his first racing columns, he clearly has a lot of time for the aforementioned Henderson.

A favourite anecdote involves the fragile See You Then who won three successive Champion Hurdles despite having legs like glass. After one prep race for Cheltenham, Henderson couldn’t sleep and decided to go and take off the horse’s bandages, knowing it would be fraught without stable lad Glyn Foster who was the only person who had the equine hero’s trust. When he got to the stable, vet Frank Mahon was already there. He, too, couldn’t sleep. Yet, when asked by the trainer why he was perched on the manger, he looked at the champion and told Henderson: “He won’t let me out!”

There was also the time when Henderson’s two mile champion chaser Remittance Man became separated from the docile sheep Nobby who accompanied the highly-strung horse to the races.

When a substitute was put in the stable, Remittance Man picked up the poor animal – and chucked it out unceremoniously. In the end the trainer had to search for Nobby amongst a flock of 400 at his father Johnny’s farm. “Amazingly, we sent in a horse and 399 of the sheep went one way, and one came out, and that was Nobby,” said Henderson.

Like Oakley, the trainer is worried about the influence of all-weather Flat racing which diminishes the number of horses switching to jumps.

Equally, the author is concerned about the rise of the agents who book rides for jockeys, and the influence of individuals like Dave Roberts who booked all of the great AP McCoy’s rides. Though the professionalism of jockeys has changed out of all recognition from the boozy sessions in saunas to lose weight, exemplified by the great Terry Biddlecombe, to the athlete-like fitness regimes followed by most of today’s combatants, there are repercussions for less successful riders.

“People like Nicky Henderson freely admit agents like Dave Roberts are running the show,” says Oakley who used to catch ‘red-eye flights during his broadcasting career so not to miss major Saturday meetings. “If Dave Roberts can fill a racecard with all his jockeys, there aren’t the opportunities for the non title-chasing jockeys. That is a concern.”

Yet a recurring theme of this tome is sportsmanship, Oakley cites the year when Peter Scudamore was leading the title race before being injured. “His great rival John Francome drew level and stopped riding for the rest of the season so they shared the title, where else would that happen?” he says.

In the corridors of power at Westminster, racing and politics intertwined. He laughs at the memory of “playing hookey” from Westminster to go racing at Windsor where a Tory MP had a runner that was expected to win. It did not. “The owner had an argument with Willie Carson and we ate pizzas in the car park of the Holiday Inn, not quite what I envisaged. There are not the racing fans in the Commons that there used to be.”

As for the politics of today, Mr Oakley says: “Once it’s in your blood, like racing, it’s hard to kick the habit.” One of the few pundits to foresee David Cameron taking Britain out of Europe “by mistake”, the 75-year-old still contributes to CNN’s political coverage.

On Theresa May, he says: “The jury is still out. Very cautious. Almost deliberately dull but methodical and not easily fazed. She has an almost impossible hand with Brexit.”

A pundit who once lobbied Gordon Brown – successfully – to ensure the Budget did not clash with the blue riband Cheltenham Festival, he fears that Brexit’s Article 50 will be triggered during next week’s National Hunt Festival. If it is – and CNN require his services – Robin Oakley will be otherwise engaged. “If it’s a week later, it will be fine,” he adds. Racing first, politics second.

Sixty Years of Jump Racing: From Arkle to McCoy by Robin Oakley, with Edward Gillespie, is published by Bloomsbury, priced £25.