Bygones - Why Champion Chase pretenders will never be a match for Badsworth Boy

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“The crowd are already roaring him home as Badsworth Boy comes to the last... Badsworth Boy strides away to win in tremendous style. Badsworth Boy makes turf history.”

Spine-tingling words from the ‘voice of racing’ that did justice to turf history – the Yorkshire steeplechaser becoming the first (and only) horse to win three successive Champion Chases.

It is a record that Nicky Henderson’s Altior will attempt to equal on Wednesday providing that he overcomes lameness in time.

But Badsworth Boy holds another rare feat. Owned by Rotherham’s Doug Armitage, this two-mile steeplechaser was trained by three members of the same family – Tony Dickinson, his all-conquering son Michael and, when he switched to the Flat, Monica, the matriarch and, so long, the unsung heroine, of this great success story.

It was Monica – universally known and admired as Mrs D – who prepared the fragile Badsworth Boy for his date with destiny in 1985.

A day after her odds-on Champion Hurdle favourite Browne’s Gazette was beaten after diving to the right at the start, she was enjoying her finest hour.

“What a woman,” eulogised former champion jockey John Francome to The Yorkshire Post.

“She was a really good rider herself and a big cog in the wheel. She never missed a trick.”

Victor Green, reporting for The Yorkshire Post, also paid tribute to Mrs D. Under the headline ‘Boy sails into history’, he said the trainer feared the Cheltenham ground would be too quick.

By then, the veteran Badsworth Boy was suffering arthritis in addition to navicular disease – an ailment in the horse’s feet. In Mrs D, he had no-one better to look out for signs of lameness.

“We only trained him on a soft surface and ran him on soft,” explained Michael Dickinson while back in Yorkshire recently to celebrate his 70th birthday.

“As he got older, it got worse and worse. It was a brilliant job by Mrs D. He had had a lot of success but he was old and I didn’t leave mum a 100 per cent sound horse. He was just past his best when Mrs D took him over.”

Dickinson, who still trains in America while his wife oversees production of their ground-breaking Tapeta all-weather surface, also credits Robert Earnshaw for much of the horse’s success.

With Badsworth Boy bred to be a sprinter, he said the Yorkshireman’s horsemanship – and patience at the Dickinson stables at Harewood – was integral to subsequent successes.

“Robert Earnshaw was vital to his success,” ventured the fastidious Dickinson. “Robert Earnshaw was the best rider over a steeplechase fence I have ever seen.

“I have watched quite a few races in the last few weeks from the last 15 years. He (Earnshaw) gained so much ground in the air over lots of horses, not just Badsworth.

“He was a brilliant horseman and could see the perfect stride to the fence from 10 strides away. He saw a stride, he went for it and gained lengths in the air.

“In his early years, Badsworth jumped a bit flat but Robert, the brilliant horseman that he is, got him to meet his fences right and he could hurdle them.”

Yet the modest jockey, now a much respected senior steward, is flattered.

“That’s Michael being Michael,” says Earnshaw, who lives near Harrogate.

“He tended to jump really flat and go millions of miles to the hour. All you could do was produce him at a fence and not get him racing. You had to keep a hand on the handbrake.”

Earnshaw says the key was to get the horse standing back on his hocks at a fence before leaping into the air at upwards of 30mph.

This was self-evident in the 1983 Queen Mother, Badsworth Boy’s first, when nearly crashing out at the second last before beating two former winners by around 35 lengths. They were so far clear that the BBC cameramen nearly missed the moment of triumph because they were focusing on the remote battle for second.

Another emphatic win followed 12 months later – one of Michael Dickinson’s last Grade One successes as a NH trainer – before the 1985 renewal.

Earnshaw recalls it was still “business as usual” at Harewood before adding this caveat: “If I was fair and honest, there was less confidence surrounding dear old Badsworth.”

Not only was the chestnut horse now 11 years of age, and more susceptible to his physical ailments, but Ireland’s chief challenger Bobsline, the previous year’s Arkle winner, was a formidable adversary.

That was until the dramatic downhill fence, the third last, when Fran Berry’s mount overjumped and crumpled on landing.

There were gasps of shock from the crowd after the fall left Badsworth Boy clear. He survived a minor mistake at the second last before asserting to win by 10 lengths in his yellow colours to O’Sullevan’s evocation.

Would he have won if Bobsline had stood up? “Who knows?” says Earnshaw, who had been injured in a fall at Catterick the previous week and, according to this newspaper’s correspondent, “looked none too robust afterwards”.

“Badsworth was slightly beyond his best and you didn’t know what he would find at the end of the race. I felt a slight sense of relief – it was an achievement I’m still very proud of.”

So, too, is Michael Dickinson, who maintains that Badsworth Boy’s record in the two-mile steeplechasing division is superior to that of more high-profile winners – even if Altior equals the feat.

“He is the best chaser I have ever trained. He won the Champion Chase three times – no horse has ever done that.

“The first time he won it by 35 lengths from two previous winners. How many times is a Grade One championship race at the Festival won by such a margin?

“He had speed. He was fast, and won at six furlongs, and then Robert taught him to jump. It took him two years to learn to jump fences and that was Robert.

“He had good owners because, in those days, it didn’t rain as much as it did this year. We couldn’t run him very much and the owners never forced us to run him.

“Altior is a brilliant horse and Nicky Henderson is a good friend of mine, but Badsworth is a better horse than Altior.

“Badsworth won the Champion chase by 35 lengths and 10 in his final year. Altior has won by seven and less than two lengths. And three is more than two.”

For now ...