The idea of writing a weekly column is hopefully, to come up with – dare I suggest the obvious – something interesting – about someone in racing, who you may know but when you can put more meat on the bone, make it a little more than a click-baited headline and a decent read.
But then racing is fantastic this way, it is never short of a story, just look at the last Group 1 weekend, it could have been Ethan Brown's continued Group 1 redemption (and we will get to him), or Graeme Begg's return to the big game he once gave away and now chases our most fabled prize with Lunar Flare in the Melbourne Cup.
Or those Group 1s in Sydney, the tantalising if not Epsom desperate dead heat, or the Waller show running through the Flight or the Metrop, but it would be somewhat remiss to miss the chance to share the brilliant stories of the much-loved Sir Mark Prescott's success in the famous Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe with the triumphant grey Alpinista.
Trainer Sir Mark Prescott (L) celebrates winning the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe horse race with Alpinista. Picture: Anne-Christine – AFP
Pictures of the runner up's trainer Jean-Claude Rouget and all-time leading Group 1 winning trainer Aiden O'Brien clamouring to embrace Sir Mark's finest hour at aged 74 suggest this is some man worth knowing more of.
He is.
And it is – but where to start. It is without question that the master of Heath House, on the cusp of the famous Warren Hill gallops in Newmarket, is a master horseman, but he is so much more than that and much to include here that embodies a horseman, raconteur and person steeped in all aspects of the game and life.
Can you drop in the word "eccentric" if you like, a 74-year-old devoted to punctuality, pinned collar and tie. The title comes as the 3rd Baronet inherited from his uncle in 1965, before he became the youngest trainer in Newmarket in 1970.
You can add his passions for coursing, cock fighting and bull fighting, a teetotaller but chain cigar smoker (until recently).
I was lucky enough to sit next to him and his then cigar at The Jockey Club house in Newmarket the year travelling for TVN for Takeover Target's Royal Ascot assault back in 2006, and was mesmerised but his effortless storytelling.
Let me share some back for you, and hopefully you will agree this is one person you'd love to share a day with, or that Australian racing would seek to break his fear of travel, to get him to talk here at some stage.
Be sure to click on the tweets below to view each of the videos.
In some order, the yarn about battling jockey Val Godden at Wye racecourse opens your thoughts.
OK then this, about the appropriately titled Sir Reginald Macdonald-Buchanan – and stay for the punchline.
Or as he has been the great mentor to trainer like William Haggas, (Simon Crisford and Pascal Bary) and others – this story confirming the punctuality required.
Of the effortless tale of a "bollocking" from a regented British owner he never trained for but beautifully told in the shape of an after dinner speaker.
But then there is this in his own words about an American owner Sir Mark trained for, called "Mrs A", Penelope Abercrombie, the daughter of a Texan oil billionaire, but an impressive woman in her own right.
Not just a horse race investor, owners and breeder, but a Broadway player (Pyjama Game) as well as a boxing promoter (Canizales Brothers) – Sir Mark was fond of the sweet science as well and a judge and spruiker, but Mrs A was of some distinction that would end up in conversation with the Queen Mother about different boxers (dogs).
But Sir Mark's own recollections of a fax sent to Mrs A – on the go – perhaps better interprets this story.
"At last, I made a break for the back door. However, the brand-new fax machine began to gurgle and out emerged a brief handwritten fax from my new owner Mrs Abercrombie (and timed at 4.40am Kentucky time). I paused momentarily and read it through as quickly as I could.
Josephine
Does One Voice run York, Saturday? Also, my daughter ‘Baby' will be over the following week, can she see the horses with you late Thursday morning?
Mark
I turned to my harassed and overloaded secretary.
"Are you ready?" I asked. "Take this down and send it off as soon as I am gone."
Dear Mrs A (full stop) One Voice runs Saturday, York 2.30pm, as planned (stop) ‘Baby' (what a stupid name to give your f*****g daughter) is welcome here at 11.30am on Thursday (full stop) Send it off as soon as you can – and off I went to Carlisle, and the fax to Kentucky.
On my return, at about 10pm that night, I went through the pile of messages, sent and received during the day and now left out on my desk by my harassed secretary.
Amongst these, to my horror, was the fax to Mrs Abercrombie complete with "what a stupid name to give your f*****g daughter" – verbatim, complete and unexpurgated…!
The following morning passed slowly and tension mounted as midday approached. A reply from Kentucky was expected. It was only a matter of time, one imagined, before the new fax machine would churn out another message, this time, no doubt, detailing the stable to which the five Pin Oak horses should now be redirected.
As lunchtime approached, the machine finally started to roll out a typed reply – another bad sign, I thought. I could hardly bring myself to read its contents. I read it slowly.
Josephine
Good luck at York with One Voice. Also, just to let you know that ‘what a stupid name to give your f*****g daughter' will be with you at 11.30am on f*****g Thursday!
************
Trainer Sir Mark Prescott. Picture: Alan Crowhurst – Getty Images
I think you may now have a sense of this man.
The Arc of course is run in Paris, Sir Mark is a notorious non-traveller. He loves nothing more than a Sunday at home directly ringing his 59 individual owners as a matter of routine. And he likes little deviation from such a routine.
Which happened to a previous Arc trip.
"I had a shocking journey when (five-time champion jockey) Doug Smith was violently ill in the plane and handed me his sick bag once he‘d filled it," he explains. "What he thought I was going to do with it, I don't know, but it wasn't what I was hoping for.
"Mostly, though, it's the aftermath of the race that puts me off. I've had those terrible trips when you're hermetically sealed with the owner and yours has run extraordinarily badly, you trudge across the car park and you're always in a private plane which has been chartered by the people that had the winner, and they're ecstatically happy and they won't leave the course at the end of the day and they won't get on the plane and your owner is silent while they're all roaring with laughter and corks are popping."
The buildup to the Arc reveals one of the race visits Sir Mark made in the past, when Miss Rausing's (owner of Alpinista) Alborada ran in the Japan Cup.
Alpinista” crosses the finish line to win The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Picture: Anne-Christine – AFP
And where to start here.
From the Steve Dennis story in Thoroughbred racing Commentary, it goes this way: "I'd taken Alborada to the Japan Cup in 1999 but she went lame and we couldn't run her," he says. "So there we were in Tokyo, no plans. Then Julian Lloyd – he was one of (owner-breeder) Kirsten Rausing's racing managers, and the most incredible ‘fixer' – made one phone call and suddenly we were in a car with Eric Clapton on the way to his gig."
"I knew nothing about him," adds Prescott, which seems totally unbelievable until you take into account the man telling the story." But there I was, with his fans surrounding the car and me waving regally out at them. I was there when he did his sound test, I went backstage, the whole thing.
The problem had been that their horse had Japan Cup issues explained quite eloquently as "suboptimal news" about their hopeful runner.
"Suboptimal news," was how the owner greeted the phone call from her trainer, but for Prescott there was at least the compensation of a limo trip with Eric Clapton to see the guitar god in concert – although even that didn‘t go quite as well as he might have hoped.
"It should have been the saving grace," he recalls. "The car was surrounded by screaming Japanese girls and it was quite an experience, but when we got to our seats in the fifth row, I found I just couldn‘t stay awake, so I slept through the whole thing and didn't wake up until the music stopped.
"I went backstage afterwards and tried to say all the right things to Mr Clapton, about how much I‘d enjoyed the whole evening, and he said: 'Yes, I saw how much you'd enjoyed it.' So it turned out to be not much of a trip at all."
Prescott still craves a British Classic victory for a CV that now boast the world's most recognisable race, the Arc. But his mind always wanders to the future not the past, bullfights, greyhounds, or Alpinista's.
"I get enormous satisfaction, like all schoolmasters, from two things," he explains, "maximising the potential of the individual, and ensuring they have a bright future,” is written by Steve Dennis in a Thoroughbred Racing Commentary piece.
"He has a penchant for the macabre, ably illustrated by the three vast glass cases containing the flayed hides of celebrated 19th century horses that hang in his stable yard, 1888 Derby winner Ayrshire, 1889 Derby winner Donovan, and the outstanding unbeaten champion and influential sire St Simon, winner of the 1884 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot.
"St Simon's hide was given to Prescott by Lady Anne Bentinck, grand-daughter of the colt's owner the Duke of Portland, and came with the benediction ‘they are disgusting, and I'm surprised that someone like Sir Mark Prescott should be delighted with them. Still, each to their own.”
Incidentally, St Simon's skeleton is preserved in the National History Museum and two of his feet can be found in the Jockey Club Rooms in Newmarket. With a little diligence, he could be rebuilt…
Prescott is an aficionado of the bullring, will wax lyrical about El Cordobes, Belmonte and Manolete, appreciates that many view it as a barbarous game but regards it nevertheless as high art.
"It is life and death – and there's really nothing else, is there," he says. "The bull has no chance, the bull is going to die, but it has lived marvelously for four and a half years, and I have no difficulty with the concept.
"The average layman who might go to the corrida needs to understand the rules, which are complex and rigorously enforced. The matador must do his job as deliberately, as slowly, as dangerously, as skillfully, as beautifully as he can, and I have a great respect for both bull and man."
"At bullfights in Spain women and children come to see this artistry play out – no other art form brings together life and death in this way. Whether it is right or wrong is quite another thing, but no-one can deny its complexity, its relationship with tragedy."
"Any sport that involves animals has this complexity. It's the same with horse racing. Many people think that because they understand their pets they can talk about other animals in the same breath, but most people these days have no idea about the working animal, it's something that has been lost from modern society."
Which means Sir Mark Prescott is not only an Arc-winning trainer, but a person of continued substance and someone who you'd love to hear over lunch or dinner or the bar at which he doesn't drink or smoke, but would command endless attention.
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