Monday 1 June 2009

One of the True Greats of Sport




This guy was good.



He was voted both greatest National Hunt trainer and greatest Flat trainer of the 20th century.

You don't get many of them to the Punt.


RIP

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a bloody wonderful photo!

I used to smoke until 9 years ago. There's hope for me yet....

Anonymous said...

Greetings Idle, farqs here...
Great is a very overused word, but most appropriate in this case.
As the greatest jockey, Mr Piggott said yesterday:

"Vincent's attention to detail was to be seen everywhere at Ballydoyle, and he wanted to operate at the level where he could get to know each individual animal as closely as was humanly possible. Everything he did was geared to keeping his horses happy and relaxed at home so that they would perform to their full potential on the racecourse, and the results speak for themselves.

"There's really no argument. Vincent was the greatest."

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

"The young trainer was in the lavatory of a Dublin hotel when he overheard two vets discussing this fine horse, whose sale had twice fallen through because it suffered from a respiratory problem. “But at his age, I don’t think it will ever affect him,” O’Brien heard one vet say to the other. The young trainer rushed to a telephone: “I immediately called Mr [Frank] Vickerman, the only man I knew with any money, and told him to buy the horse.” ".

The story of greatness continued...

Thanks for this Iders!

Philipa said...

Pat Hewitt, and now Jacqui Home Sec is leaving post at the end of the week.

More!

More!

Sorry I know nothing about racing except it's a bit scary.

idle said...

Farqs, what Lester Piggott really said was this:

"Y'know, shmurr grnk flttr, Vincent kloinsh, y'know, prbly pstf the greatest, y'know".

I've got a great true story about Lester which I will post in due course.

Tuscan Tony said...

He looks remarkably like the actor from Colditz - did he have a second thespian-oriented career that anyone knows of?

Anonymous said...

T/T: I think you mean Bernard Hepton

According to his entry in Wikipedia, his last acting part was in Midsomer Murders.

I remember this well, as he drove a Morgan +8. Hard to believe that such a chap could be the villain...