2013
SIR Henry Cecil was one of the greatest racehorse trainers the world has known.
From the moment he announced himself with Celestial Cloud’s triumph at Ripon in 1969, through to Love Divine’s success in the 2000 Oaks at Epsom, he bestrode the sport, sometimes seeming to tower above it, so routine were the big race victories, the nine trainers’ championships.
However, the millennium brought little cheer to accompany Love Divine’s crowning moment.
It would be seven years before Cecil won another classic, the Oaks with Light Shift, and there were times when he seemed to have dropped so far off the pace that only the loyalty of Prince Khalid Abdullah, and one or two others, kept him going at all. Leading owner-breeders Jim Joel, Lord Howard de Walden and Louis Freedman had died, and Cecil had infamously fallen out with Sheikh Mohammed.
Yet, whatever F Scott Fitzgerald meant when he said that there are no second acts in American lives, the dictum could not be applied to Henry Richard Amherst Cecil. He rallied just as the cancer, a cruel, relentless interloper which took seven years to finish him, struck. Light Shift won the Oaks, Twice Over the Coral Eclipse, the Champion Stakes twice and the Juddmonte International, Midday the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare and Prix Vermeille.
Finally, there was the wonder that was Frankel, an incomparable racehorse who had admirers travelling the length and breadth of the country to see him and his brave, stricken handler. As second acts go, it wasn’t bad.
Stepson
As champion trainer Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort’s stepson and assistant, Cecil had the perfect platform to launch his own career at Freemason Lodge and Warren Place.
He was born with the proverbial silver spoon, not that it would have helped without a sublime empathy and affinity with thoroughbreds. Cecil went on to win 25 English classics and over 150 top-level races around the world.
He was born into the Establishment, as the British ruling class has come to be known, and there was no mistaking his aristocratic bearing, yet he sometimes resembled an outsider looking in. He dressed not like a trainer, but a man heading for a smart lunch in Mayfair.
Where other handlers would give standard replies to the press, he would gaze with a mixture of fondness, tolerance and bafflement and say: “I don’t know. What do YOU think?” as if the hapless scribbler might miraculously match him for knowledge.
Evelyn Waugh would have loved Henry and found room for him in one or more of his novels, but the trainer’s laid-back, diffident attitude could not disguise his burning ambition.
Newmarket was saddened when he and his first wife Julie, Noel Murless’s daughter, split up. “It makes me smile when people talk about how relaxed and easy-going he is,” she once said. “They obviously haven’t seen him at six in the morning!”
He was a perfectionist, but a much better judge of horses than people. It may be best to draw a veil over his second marriage to Natalie, though her forthright comments hardly helped the delicate situation with Sheikh Mohammed.
The rupture should probably have been healed - how many owners would part with a man who, quite apart from other successes, had delivered the Triple Crown with Oh So Sharp? At the time, Cecil’s upper-class background revealed itself in his clear detestation of prolonged coverage and speculation in the press.
Best jockeys
The best trainers need the best jockeys, it goes without saying. Cecil employed Greville Starkey, Joe Mercer, Lester Piggott, Steve Cauthen, Pat Eddery, Kieren Fallon, Richard Quinn and Tom Queally, with Willie Ryan a dedicated number two. There is a case for saying that Cauthen was the perfect fit.
Polite, unassuming and a brilliant judge of pace, he led all the way on Slip Anchor in the 1985 Derby, the first time that had happened since 1926, and repeated the dose on Reference Point two years later. Beset by sinus problems, Reference Point represented one of Cecil’s finest training performances, as he returned from a long lay-off to win the Dante and the Derby.
It is harder to imagine Cecil having a close relationship with Fallon, who was eventually sacked, almost certainly unfairly, but gave the trainer his fourth Derby with Oath in 1999.
The following year, Cecil lost his adored twin brother David to cancer. Henry, more introspective now and with only around 40 horses on the premises, found increasing consolation in the magnificent gardens at Warren Place. When the cancer came, and his fortunes revived, he married Jane McKeown in 2008. He has a son and daughter from his marriage to Julie and a son Jake with Natalie.
A complex man, equipped with a self-destructive streak, Henry Cecil was, in the opinion of this writer [Ian Carnaby], a complete one-off and a genius. He made time for strangers, and quite possibly preferred them. He was the outright master of his craft and, when he told you that horses talked to each other on their way to the gallops, you believed him. He took his troubles on the chin and was loved by complete strangers from the other side of the tracks.
How many of us will be able to say that?
FACT FILE
Sir Henry Richard Amherst Cecil 1943-2013
Born: January 11th, 1943 in Aberdeen.
Apprenticeship: Assistant to stepfather Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort 1964-68.
First trainer’s licence: 1969.
Champion trainer: 1976, 1978-79, 1982, 1984-85, 1987-88, 1990, and 1993.
Derby winners: Slip Anchor 1985, Reference Point 1987, Commander In Chief 1993, and Oath 1999.
1000 Guineas: One In A Million 1979, Fairy Footsteps 1981, Oh So Sharp 1985, Bosra Sham 1996, Sleepytime 1997, and Wince 1999.
2000 Guineas: Bolkonski 1975, Wollow 1976, and Frankel 2011.
Oaks: Oh So Sharp 1985, Diminuendo 1988, Snow Bride 1989, Lady Carla 1996, Reams Of Verse 1997, Ramruma 1999, Love Divine 2000, and Light Shift 2007.
St Leger: Light Cavalry 1980, Oh So Sharp 1985, Reference Point 1987, and Michelozzo 1989.
Irish classic winners: 1000 Guineas: Cloonagh 1973; Derby: Old Vic 1989 and Commander In Chief 1993; Oaks: Diminuendo 1988, Alydaress 1989, and Ramruma 1999.
French classic winners: Prix du Jockey-Club: Old Vic 1989; Prix de Diane: Indian Skimmer 1987 and Rafha 1990; Prix Royal Oak: Ardross 1981 and El Cuite 1986.
Other overseas Group/Grade 1s: Yashmak - Flower Bowl Invitational Handicap 1997; Royal Anthem - Canadian International 1998; Beat Hollow - Grand Prix de Paris 2000; Passage Of Time - Criterium de Saint-Cloud 2006; Midday - Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare 2009 and Prix Vermeille 2010.
King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes:Reference Point 1987, Belmez 1990, and King’s Theatre 1994.
First winner: Celestial Cloud, Ripon, May 17th, 1969. Last winner: Court Pastoral, Windsor, June 3rd 2013.
Other information: Cecil’s 75 Royal Ascot winners included success every year from 1974 to 2002, with the exception of 1996. He was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s 2011 Birthday Honours List for his services to horse racing.