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Steve Jones: “These are my top 10 grey horses”

Steve Jones |

November 30, 2020

THEY'RE the personification of the proverbial housewives’ favourite come the biggest races and social trips to the track but there is something spectacularly special about a grey.

Whether it’s just because they stick out from the crowd or, maybe, it’s the snowy white coat of our most-loved aging stars, those horses with a grey complexion provoke some of our fondest racing memories.

Bristol De Mai jumped his way into my list of top ten greys when slicing his way through the Haydock mud to win a third Betfair Chase.

Here’s my personal favourites.

 

Desert Orchid (David Elsworth)

Not only my favourite grey but my favourite horse. As a teenager I was mesmerised by dear old Dessie.

The way he appeared to go flat out from the front, taking off miles before the fences and clearing them with ease, he encapsulated everything that was great about jump racing.

Whether it was giving lumps of weight to Panto Prince in that epic Victor Chandler Chase over two miles, easily carrying top weight to victory in the Irish National over three and a half, or slugging it out on ground he hated to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Dessie was the greatest.

 

I remember seeing him up close and thinking he just looked like any normal grey horse. I suppose, having seen his races, I was expecting some giant of a horse. Of course, he was, in every other respect and as far from normal as you could get.

 

Indian Skimmer (Henry Cecil)

As a dappled grey, Indian Skimmer could have sat as a model for a million rocking horses but there was nothing wooden about her performances on the track.

Owned by Sheikh Mohammed and racing in his once-famous maroon-and-white silks, she dazzled in the top 1m2f races of the late ‘80s.

In her three-year-old campaign she enjoyed a superb season with the highlight her defeat of France’s super filly Miesque in the Prix Diane.

The following year she rattled off wins in the Sun Chariot as well as the Champion Stakes and the Irish version of the 1m2f Group 1 prize.

Her name is rarely mentioned when the great fillies are recalled in racecourse bars up and down the land but I’ve no doubt she was one of the very best.

 

Further Flight (Barry Hills)

The reason why Flat stayers are so loved is that stick around longer than your average top-class summer star.

Further Flight did more than that. Not only did he return year after year, having his final race just a few months before becoming a teenager, he was good enough to win an impressive 24 races.

It’s quite extraordinary that five of those wins came in one race – the Jockey Club Cup.

From 1991 to 1995, Further Flight lifted the Newmarket Group 3 prize every year. He had a few more cracks to make it half a dozen but his Jockey Club Cup exploits remain a record as the only horse to win the same European Group race five times.

The race might have moved to Ascot and is now the Long Distance Cup on British Champions’ Day, but it will always be remembered by those of a certain vintage as Further Flight’s race.

 

Neptune Collonges (Paul Nicholls)

There can’t have been a more unfortunate Grand National winner. That might sound strange as, after all, Neptune Collonges won the world’s great race by the narrowest of margins.

The end of his nose was only poked in front of Sunnyhillboy right on the line having put in a superb round of jumping under Daryl Jacob to keep him in touch with the leaders.

The unlucky bit comes with having the misfortune to be born in the same era – a year younger – than two of the greats from his own stable.

He finished third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup behind Denman and Kauto Star in 2008 and returned a year later to fill fourth place behind the same superb stablemates.

That was more than three years before his greatest day around Aintree’s world famous course but shows how good he was and how he has to go down as one of the true National champions.

 

Bristol De Mai (Nigel Twiston-Davies)

Many might look down their noses at horses happiest when slogging it out in knee-deep mud around Haydock.

Of course, if you have a course specialist you want it to take a preference for Cheltenham but that shouldn’t detract from the performances of Bristol De Mai.

Incredibly his only wins in the last three years have come in the Betfair Chase but, when you look at the beaten horses, it’s hard to argue he isn’t truly top-class.

His 2017 victory by what has to be described, unofficially at least, as a country mile, came from King George hero Cue Card.

Another Colin Tizzard ace, Gold Cup winner Native River, was dispatched the following year and last week’s third success came from dual King George winner Clan Des Obeaux.

It wasn’t just the substance but more about the style. In front throughout he simply jumped and galloped his rivals into the ground. Bravo, I say.

 

Pukka Major (Tim Thomson Jones)

The first time I went to the Cheltenham Festival was in 1989. Having taken a ‘dentist day’ from school, a pal and I took the bus over Cleeve Hill and snuck into what is now the Best Mate Enclosure.

In those days it was affectionately known as the Cabbage Patch and it had about as much cover as a field of brassicas.

The first day of that Festival was notable for two things. Beech Road won the Champion Hurdle at 50-1 and it absolutely tipped down all day.

There was no danger of us cutting short our trip to dry out as we had been given a car park tip for the last race, the Grand Annual.

It was for an in-form grey called Pukka Major. He was more a muddy brown when he returned with Peter Scudamore but, with steam rising from his splattered body he looked fantastic to us.

In later years his ‘R’ rate would have given government officials palpitations as he refused to race three times before he headed off into retirement in 1993. That just added to his character and, for me, he will always be remembered as helping make the inevitable detention well worthwhile.

 

Daylami (Saeed bin Suroor)

There was a time when I loved the Breeders’ Cup. I remember being utterly distraught when Dancing Brave was beaten at America’s biggest racing festival and equally delighted some years later when Daylami signed off with victory in the Turf at Gulfstream Park in 1999.

The victory was redemption for Frankie, who had been getting plenty of stick on the other side of the Atlantic having been beaten on Swain at the previous year’s Breeders’ Cup.

Daylami was a five-year-old by then and he had already won the Eclipse, King George and Irish Champion Stakes having been snapped up by Godolphin from his original owner The Aga Khan, who had him trained in France by Alain de Royer-Dupre.

Like many greys, Daylami got whiter with age and he was positively snowy when he fetched up for his swansong in America.

His Breeders’ Cu defeat of Royal Anthem was great for many reasons. Not least Dettori’s celebratory cry to the crowd of “what about Swain now?”. Take that, yanks.

 

Teeton Mill (Venetia Williams)

Just like Bristol De Mai, there’s something about the sight of a grey covered in mud having waded through deep ground to land one of jump racing’s biggest prizes.

Teeton Mill’s splattered face was seen in the Kempton winners’ enclosure after he had seen off the likes of Gold Cup winners Imperial Call and See More Business as well as mercurial Challenger Du Luc and Escartefigue, among others, to land the 1998 King George.

Incredibly, it was one of just five races the prolific point-to-point winner had after switching to the professional sphere at the age of nine.

His three other wins that season weren’t bad, either. Having landed Wincanton’s Badger Beer Chase, he won the Hennessy Gold Cup by a whopping 15 lengths and he went on to defeat another decent grey, Senor El Betrutti, in the Grade 1 Ascot Chase. Sadly, he sustained an injury in the Gold Cup on his next start and never raced again.

His was an unusual but brilliant career.

 

Calapaez (Brooke Sanders)

Quite what attracted me to Calapaez, I can’t really remember. He did beat one of my favourite horses of the time, Green Willow, when landing the Cleeve Hurdle at the end of January in 1989 but that would surely have made him the enemy to an impressionable teenager.

Whatever it was, he was one of the first horses I thought of when setting out to write this piece.

During an eight-year career he locked horns with some of the great hurdlers of the time like Champion Hurdlers Kribensis and Morley Street, as well as Celtic Shot, Stayers’ Hurdle hero Rustle and top chaser Remittance Man. He even beat Grand National winner Rough Quest over fences at Kempton one year.

It’s funny what sticks in your mind when your making your way in the world but I have nothing but fond memories of Calapaez.

 

Charcoal Wally (Ron Hodges)

As a lad I lived for my weekend trips to the races. Growing up in the Cotswolds, I was, of course, a regular at Cheltenham but Stratford, Warwick, Worcester and Hereford were also regular haunts.

It was all new to me so even the horses spinning around the lesser tracks looked like champions.

I remember seeing Cavvies Clown win at Stratford and I have vivid recollections of Mole Board and Royal Derbi fetching up at Hereford for a three-runner race so there were plenty of good horses knocking around the lower-key courses in those days.

I’m not sure where I bumped into Charcoal Wally but I remember him becoming a firm favourite. With the help of YouTube I’ve discovered he was nailed close home by Oregon Trail in the Arkle Trophy of 1986 when another grey on this list, Desert Orchid, was back in third.

From what I remember he liked quick ground and had a preference for making the running. There was a fair bit of Dessie in Charcoal Wally. Not as good but nearly as lovable.

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