Sporting Bygones: Gold Cup glory for The Thinker who keeps his feet in the snow

Such is the importance to racing of the Cheltenham Festival that it has been abandoned only twice due to bad weather – once for frost, the other for flooding – but a heavy fall of snow on Gold Cup day in March, 1987 gave the course executive and particularly managing director Edward Gillespie a major headache.

The snow came as the primed-to-the-moment runners for the Gold Cup were being saddled and led into the parade ring, all glistening muscle and serious intent. Only a few yards away, with the snow settling and the course rapidly turning white, Gillespie and the stewards were torn between going ahead and calling off the big race.

The runners and riders completed the preliminaries as the snow continued to fall, the parade ring was jammed with spectators and the stands echoed with cheers as the field strutted past on their way to post. Surely the centrepiece of the Festival had to go ahead now…

Instead, a delay was the most sensible course of action open to Gillespie, whose office had received several calls from Malvern to the effect that the snowstorm would quickly pass through. The horses were recalled from the start and the huge crowd had their patience tested.

Gillespie was under intense pressure, every minute of delay seemed like an hour but still the snow came. He was conscious of the fact that the safety of the horses and their riders was his paramount concern but aware also of the massive betting outlay on the race; the expense incurred by the thousands who had flocked to Prestbury Park for the meeting, many of them travelling over from Ireland on an annual pilgrimage; the difficulties in rescheduling the big race should he decide not to let it go ahead; and the criticism he would face from the animal rights lobby should an accident to a horse be blamed on his judgment.

Owners, trainers, jockeys and stable-staff were well aware of the danger; snow compacting in the horses' hooves could quickly become balls of ice, making even walking, let alone jumping forbidding fences at Gold Cup pace, a lottery. According to Cheltenham folklore, one stable-lad overcame that problem by filling his horse's hooves with butter.

Eventually, as the precipitation eased, Gillespie took the decision to allow the field to return to the course and the starter to call in the horses and let them go on their three-mile-two-furlong journey. Due off at 3.30pm, the Gold Cup actually started at 4.51.

The chief beneficiaries of his courage were the connections of The Thinker, trained at Leasingthorpe near Bishop Auckland in County Durham by the great Arthur Stephenson and ridden by Ridley Lamb.

An impressive winner at Wetherby and Haydock, The Thinker, a nine-year-old, was well fancied and had been backed from 10-1 down to 13-2 second favourite.

He made steady progress from four out, despite making an error at the second last, and with Lamb sticking resolutely to his task was in third as they took the last fence and began the battle up Cheltenham's fearsome finishing rise.

Cybrandian looked to have the best chance for a few seconds but he hung badly to the right as The Thinker made his final effort and with Lamb maintaining his driving finish all the way to the line Stephenson had the greatest moment of his illustrious training career when The Thinker triumphed by one-and-a-half lengths.

The Eighties was a vintage decade for Northern-trained horses in the Gold Cup. Malton-based Peter Easterby kicked off the run of success when Little Owl, ridden by his part-owner Jim Wilson, triumphed in the 1981 renewal of steeplechasing's Blue Riband and Michael Dickinson, who trained at Dunkeswick near Harewood, then sent out Silver Buck to take the honours in 1982.

Dickinson, the rising star of British racing, followed up the next year with perhaps the finest feat in training history when he was responsible not only for the winner, Bregawn, but also for the next four horses to finish.

Malton's hugely-popular Jimmy Fitzgerald, a fine tutor to jockeys as well as a brilliant trainer both on the Flat and over jumps, saddled Forgive 'n' Forget to take the Gold Cup in 1985 and Stephenson's success with The Thinker completed the North's great run of Eighties success, although Peter Beaumont, from Brandsby, was to enjoy his moment of glory in 1993 when Jodami took Cheltenham's major prize.

The Gold Cup was the pinnacle for Arthur Stephenson, who trained 2,988 winners during his career – a record which has been beaten only by Martin Pipe. Stephenson died in Middlesbrough Hospital in 1992 at the age of 72 and was involved with racing to the end, watching his horses on television as he endured his final illness.

Ridley Lamb died tragically in July, 1994 aged 39 when the car in which he and a friend were travelling left the quayside at Seahouses in Northumberland and plunged into 10ft of water. Both were drowned.