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Ruby Walsh Limited Edition Painting

€250.00

Superb limit edition artwork venerating the great Ruby Walsh,one of the greatest jump jockeys in history, signed by Ruby himself and champion trainers Paul Nicholls & Willie Mullins. Origins :Lismore Co Waterford Dimensions : 70cm x 85cm Rupert "Ruby" Walsh (born 14 May 1979 in Kill, County Kildare, Ireland) is an Irish former jockey. He is the second child, and eldest son, of former champion amateur jockey Ted Walsh and his wife Helen. Walsh is the third most prolific winner in British and Irish jump racing history behind only Sir Anthony McCoy and Richard Johnson.
Career
Showing talent from an early age, Walsh won the Irish amateur title twice, in 1996/97 (aged 18) and 1997/98, before turning professional. He won the English Grand National in 2000 at his first attempt, aged 20, on Papillon,a horse trained by his father and owned by Mrs J Maxwell Moran.Father and son then went on to win the Irish Grand National with Commanche Court the same year. In the 2004/05 season Walsh won three of the four Nationals: the Irish on the 2006 Grand National winner, Numbersixvalverde, the Welsh on subsequent 2007 Grand National winner Silver Birch, and the English on Hedgehunter. He rode Cornish Rebel in the Scottish, but was beaten a short head by Joe's Edge. However, he had earlier success in that race on Take Control in 2002 and following the retirement in 2015 of Tony McCoy, became the only jockey currently riding to have won all four Nationals. Walsh has one of the best Grand National records amongst current jockeys having won the race twice (2000, 2005), finished second once (2006), third once (2009) and fourth twice (2001, 2002). Walsh rode over 2500 winners including 59 winners at the Cheltenham Festival since his first win in 1998 on Alexander Banquet. These include the 2004 Queen Mother Champion Chase on Azertyuiop, the 2007 and 2009 Cheltenham Gold Cup on the favourite, Kauto Star and two subsequent Queen Mother successes in 2008 and 2009 on the brilliant Master Minded. He also won both the 2006 Tingle Creek Chase and the King George VI Chase on Kauto Star. He repeated the King George feat, again on Kauto Star, in 2007 (just days after returning from injury), 2008 and 2009 when Kauto Star won impressively by 36 lengths. He reclaimed the King George VI Chase in 2011 on board Kauto Star after Long Run won the race in 2010. He won the Hennessy Gold Cup twice, in 2003 on Strong Flow, and in more recent times, 2009 with Denman. He also won the Whitbread Gold Cup twice, in 2001 and 2003 (the latter when it was run as the Attheraces Gold Cup), both times on Ad Hoc. In 2007, Walsh won the inaugural British Horseracing Board Jockeys' Order of Merit award. Walsh was been Irish jump jockey champion twelve times – 1998/99, 2000/01, 2004/05, 2005/06, 2006/07, 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17. Walsh's recent dominance of the jockeys' championship in Ireland is all the more remarkable given that for more than ten years he had a unique riding arrangement with two powerful stables, one on either side of the Irish Sea. Based in Calverstown, County Kildare, where he lives with his wife Gillian, he rode predominantly for Willie Mullins in Ireland. Formerly he also spent a substantial proportion of his time riding in England for Somerset-based champion trainer Paul Nicholls, the former trainer of Kauto Star. In January 2007, Walsh achieved the fastest ever century of winners in Irish jumps racing history aboard Bluestone Lad at Gowran Park. He ended the 2006/07 season with a combined total in Ireland and the UK of 198 winners, higher than any other jockey from either country that year. (This total was later increased to 200 on the disqualification of two horses for positive tests to banned substances. In both instances, Walsh had ridden the subsequently-promoted runners-up.) He repeated this feat in 2007/08, riding his 200th winner on Andreas at Sandown on his penultimate ride of the season. He rode his 1,000th Irish winner, Rare Article, at Sligo in May 2008. At the 2009 Cheltenham Festival Walsh rode a record-breaking seven winners over the four days. He equalled that record at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival. On the second day of the 2010 festival he rode Sanctuaire to victory in the Fred Winter Juvenile Novices Handicap Hurdle and therefore became the jockey with the most wins in the history of the Cheltenham festival. In March 2011, Walsh rode Hurricane Fly to victory in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, finishing ahead of Peddlers Cross and Oscar Whisky. It was Walsh's first victory in the feature race of the opening day at the Cheltenham Festival. He won his 2,500 race on Au Quart De Tour at Gowran park on 20 January 2016. As of 2019, Walsh is the Festival's most successful rider with 59 wins and has won the leading rider's award eleven times within the last fourteen years. In August 2015 Walsh won the Australian Grand National on Bashboy. On 1 May 2019, Walsh announced his retirement from racing with immediate effect after a career spanning 24 years. The announcement was made after he rode Kemboy to victory in the Punchestown Gold Cup. It was the 213th Grade One win for Walsh

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Minoru Derby & 2000 Guineas Winner Original Lithograph

€250.00
Real atmospheric original lithograph of Minoru,most famous for being the first Derby winner to be owned by a reigning British monarch. 45cm x 55cm Shanagolden Co Limerick Minoru (1906 – circa 1917) was an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse who won two British Classic Races. In a career which lasted from June 1908 to April 1910 he ran thirteen times and won seven races. After showing moderate form as a two-year-old he improved to become one of the best colts in England in the early part of 1909. He won his first five races including the 2000 Guineas and The Derby. His win at Epsom Downs Racecourse made his owner King Edward VII the first reigning British monarch to win a Derby and was greeted with unprecedented celebration. Minoru's bid to win the British Triple Crown ended when he was beaten by Bayardo in the St Leger. He was retired to stud in 1910 and was soon afterwards exported to Russia, where he disappeared during the Revolution in 1917. A then popular game of chance, which simulates a horse race in miniature, had been named after Minoru.

Background
Minoru was a bay horse bred by Colonel William Hall-Walker (later Lord Wavertree) at his stud farm at Tully in County Kildare which today is the Irish National Stud. Minoru was a son of Cyllene, winner of the 1899 Ascot Gold Cup who sired three other Epsom Derby winners, but was exported to Argentina in January 1908, before his true quality as a stallion became evident. His dam was Mother Siegel, a daughter of the highly regarded multiple stakes winner, Friar's Balsam. The colt was leased by his breeder to King Edward VII along with five other yearlings. Minoru was trained by Richard Marsh at his Egerton House stable at Newmarket, Suffolk: Marsh was the established "Royal" trainer, having prepared both Persimmon and Diamond Jubilee to win the Derby for Edward when he was Prince of Wales.
Racing career

1908: two-year-old season
Minoru began his racing career impressively, by winning the five furlong Great Surrey Foal Stakes at Epsom, on 5 June, the day that Signorinetta won The Oaks. His subsequent performances in 1908 were disappointing. He finished second to Louviers when strongly fancied for the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot in June and was second again to Battleaxe in the July Stakes at Newmarket.After a break, Minoru returned to Newmarket in autumn for two further races. He finished third in the Hopeful Stakes, and third again in the New Nursery, a handicap race for two-year-olds. In the Free Handicap, an end-of-season ranking of the best two-year-olds Bayardo was ranked top with 126 pounds, while Minoru was unrated, meaning that he was at least twenty-two pounds behind the leader. At the end of the year he was considered "useful", but not top class. Marsh, however, thought highly of the colt: when asked to assess the six horses leased by the King from Colonel Hall-Walker, he commented, "I like Minoru best. He is a bit on the leg, but a fine and resolute goer.
1909: three-year-old season

Spring
During the winter of 1908–1909, Minoru made exceptional progress, and although the King's racing manager, Marcus Beresford, was initially sceptical, Marsh decided to train the colt for the Classics. The cold weather early in the year delayed the preparation of many horses, including Bayardo, but the lightly-made Minoru took little work to reach peak fitness, giving him an advantage over most of his rivals.After performing impressively in a private trial race, Minoru made his debut in the Greenham Stakes at Newbury on 31 March and won from Valens under top weight of 136 pounds. In the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket on 28 April he started at odds of 4/1 against ten opponents and was regarded as the chief danger to the favourite Bayardo. Ridden by Herbert Joneshe raced prominently before accelerating through a narrowing gap in the closing stages and won easily from Phaleron and Louviers, with Bayardo fourth, in a race record time of 1:37.8. According to press reports the victory was greeted with "intense enthusiasm". Minoru was given very little work by Marsh before his next run in the Derby.
Summer

Minoru with Herbert Jones up in the Winner's Circle at Epsom. Painting by Alfred Charles Havell

At Epsom on 26 May, Minoru started at odds of 7/2 in a field of fifteen, with Bayardo and the American-bred Sir Martin, who started favourite, being seen as his main rivals. The crowd was smaller than usual on account of heavy rain on the morning of the race, but the King and Queen were in attendance.Minoru broke slowly on the inside but recovered quickly and by the beginning of the turn into the straight was in fourth place behind Louviers, Brooklands and Sir Martin, and just ahead of William the Fourth. At this point the race changed completely as Sir Martin, who had been traveling extremely well, stumbled in close quarters and lost his rider, badly interfering with William the Fourth.In the straight the race developed into a match between Minoru and Louviers who raced together throughout the last two furlongs, with first one and then the other appearing to have the advantage. The two colts crossed the line together, just ahead of William the Fourth who finished very strongly after recovering from the earlier incident, and looked an unlucky loser.After a long delay, the judge announced Minoru as the winner by a short head from Louviers, many of whose supporters were convinced that he had won.Valens finished fourth and Bayardo fifth. The victory for the "Royal" colt provoked "the wildest scenes of enthusiasm ever known in England", including a mass rendition of the National Anthem as the King led his horse to the winner's enclosure. Minoru himself was "swallowed up" by a crowd of supporters, several of whom attempted to obtain souvenirs by pulling hairs from his mane and tail, while his owner was informally congratulated with cries of "Good for you old sport!" and "Well done Teddy!". Minoru's victory was the first in the Derby for a reigning British monarch. The King received many congratulatory telegrams, his favourite reportedly being one which arrived from Argentina and read: "Minoru, England. Congratulations from your father– Cyllene." Minoru followed up his win at Epsom by running in the St. James's Palace Stakes over one mile at Royal Ascot, in which he started at odds of 1/3 and won from The Story and Blankney II.Minoru was then sent to Goodwood on 29 July for the Sussex Stakes, another one mile race which at that time was restricted to three-year-olds. Minoru carried 134 pounds and won very easily from his two opponents, Prester Jack and Verney.
Autumn
On 8 September Minoru attempted to complete the British Triple Crown in the St Leger at Doncaster. Bayardo had meanwhile won four successive races including an easy win over Louviers at Sandown. Minoru started second favourite and finished fourth of the seven runners, six lengths behind Bayardo, who won from Valens and Mirador. Minoru had little luck in running, being unable to obtain a clear run along the rails, but appeared to have been well beaten on merit. Herbert Jones offered no excuses, and admitted that in view of Bayardo's superiority, Minoru had been "a lucky animal" to win the 2000 Guineas and Derby. On his final start of the season, he was sent to Newmarket in October for the Free Handicap, in which he defeated the filly Electra, the winner of the 1000 Guineas and Epsom Oaks, by a neck. As Jones had been injured the previous day, Minoru was ridden on this occasion by Danny Maher, who was presented by the King with a jewelled scarf-pin in recognition of his success. Minoru's performances in 1909 was the key factor in his sire Cyllene being the 1909 Leading sire in Great Britain & Ireland. His prize money of £15,246 placed him second to Bayardo on the list of leading British money-winners.
1910: four-year-old season
Minoru was kept in training as a four-year-old with the Ascot Gold Cup as his principal target, but began to develop problems with his eyes. He made his debut in the City and Suburban Handicap at Epsom on 26 April and started 3/1 favourite, but finished seventh of the fourteen runners behind Bachelor's Double. Shortly after Minoru's disappointing run at Epsom the King died and the ownership of the colt was returned to Colonel Hall-Walker. The King's death resulted in the cancellation of all sporting events, including a meeting at Kempton Park Racecourse, where Minoru had been entered in the Jubilee Stakes. The decision was made not to persevere with the horse and he was retired to stud.
Assessment
When a new racecourse was opened on Lulu Island, Richmond, British Columbia in 1909 it was named "Minoru Park" in honour of the Derby winner. The track was later renamed Brighouse Park and closed in 1941, although the name lives on in playing fields and an ice rink on the site under the name of "Minoru Park". In their book A Century of Champions, Tony Morris and John Randall rated Minoru an average winner of the 2000 Guineas and an inferior winner of the Derby.
Stud record
Minoru stood as a stallion at Hall-Walker's Tully Stud in County Kildare, Ireland at an initial fee of 98 guineas., Minoru produced the excellent broodmare Serenissima before being sold in 1913 to a breeding operation in Russia. Serenissima's foals included:

Selene (b. 1919) - outstanding broodmare, dam of Britain's Hyperion, and stallions Sickle and Pharamond II who were successful sires in the United States

Tranquil (b. 1920) - won the 1,000 Guineas Stakes and St. Leger Stakes

Bosworth (b. 1926) - winner of the Ascot Gold Cup

Minoru disappeared during the turmoil of the 1917 Russian Revolution along with his racecourse rival Louviers and the 1913 Derby winner Aboyeur. Although there was speculation that he survived after being smuggled to Serbia, no trace of him was ever actually found.
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Original Oil Painting Lester Piggott (Artist A O’Dwyer)

€550.00

71cm x 97cm Newbridge Co Kildare Phenomenal original oil on canvas of a motionless Lester Piggott cantering to an easy victory on board a handsome bay colt.The famous colours of the Aga Khan and Lady Clague can be seen battling for the minor honours.
"Lester Piggott, a dapper yet gaunt man, ghosts across the cold marble floor of a hotel in Mayfair with a vaguely haunted expression. The prospect of another interview, after a lifetime of such encounters, does not fill the great old jockey with glee. He has heard every question before and, as an infamously reluctant communicator, he has dodged most since his first winner in 1948. A Piggott interview is meant to be a challenge like no other.

Having spent the past few days consumed by grainy yet riveting footage of Piggott riding magnificent horses like Nijinsky and Sir Ivor, or watching him show a brutal need to win while driving on Roberto and The Minstrel to victory in the Derby in the 1970s, I launch into an earnest waffle of a greeting.

“Hello,” the 79-year-old Piggott says in his whispery mumble, offering a fleeting handshake.

Piggott’s life – stretching from 11 champion jockey titles and 30 Classic victories to a tangled personal life and being jailed for tax evasion – has always been compelling and prickly. Who else has won the Derby nine times, been stripped of his OBE and waged war against his own body so that he could scale 30 pounds less than his natural weight? The vivid backdrop lingers and a splash of colour peeks out in the form of Piggott’s pink shirt beneath a sober grey suit.

Forty years ago, when known as the Long Fellow, Piggott’s fame saw him ranked alongside Muhammad Ali, Pelé and George Best. Ali boasted loudly and justifiably that he was The Greatest; but the Long Fellow preferred icy silence or his trademark mumble.

“It’s not quite the same now,” Piggott says in muted relief. “I don’t get recognised as much. I’m much older, you know.”

A glass of hot water, given a zing by a slice of lemon, appears at his side. I ramble on about hardly being able to believe he will turn 80 next month.

“I can’t believe it either,” Piggott says. “What can you do? It’s a fact, isn’t it? A lot of people know I’m going to turn 80 – but I wish they didn’t.”

He is still married, after 55 years, to Susan. But Piggott and his girlfriend, Lady Barbara Fitzgerald, with whom he lives near Geneva, have just driven from Paris to London. Piggott went to watch Frankie Dettori and Golden Horn win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – a race he won three times himself. “Golden Horn looks a good horse,” Piggott murmurs. “I’ve always liked The Arc. It’s a great race.”

At first, to keep within the remit of a racing interview, I ask if Golden Horn offers any real evidence that horses today are better than any of his best rides from 50 years ago. There is a long silence. I feel as if we’re in a Harold Pinter play and I allow the pause to stretch.

“I don’t think horses are any better today,” Piggott finally says. “There are good years and bad years. If you take Golden Horn and Mill Reef you can’t easily say one is better than the other. Mill Reef, Nijinsky and Sea The Stars are of the highest class. Golden Horn is close to that level. But how do we know which is really better?”

I’m more interested in the fact that his wife remarked in 2012 that, “at 72, you feel very differently about things than you do at 25.”

Piggott clears his throat. “When we get older we look at it differently. We’re all quite happy.” Susan has voiced similar sentiments despite Piggott fathering his son, Jamie, with his former secretary Anna Ludlow, and now living with Lady Barbara – 22 years younger than him. Does she really not harbour any bitterness? “No,” Piggott says. “I’m very lucky. We all get on.” Would he ever divorce Susan and marry Barbara? “Never thought about it.”

Piggott reacts to these invasive questions with rueful resignation. He even smiles in a way which suggests that he, his wife, his girlfriend and the three adult children with whom he remains close do function as a happy extended family. “I’ve got a good family,” he says. “I’m lucky. I’ve been easy with the kids. They’ve gone their own way and all done quite well.”

Jamie made his professional debut as a jockey at the age of 19 in July 2013. “He had a ride or two but he got a bit heavy to continue. He now works in the stables and rides every day. He probably could have been a good jockey.”

Piggott was ruthless with his own 5ft 8in frame. A typical story insists that his breakfast was a cigar and a cough – and that he ate hardly at all. Walter Swinburn, the former jockey, once told me Piggott kept his cigars and chocolate locked up. He would take out just one piece of a Yorkie bar to give him the rustle of a sugar rush.

“It did feel like a battle. But if we wanted to ride we had to be low. It wasn’t easy but we were all in the same boat because at that time the weights were so much lower.” Can he enjoy food now? “I don’t still eat much really … not compared to other people.”

Piggott was ravenous but strength coursed through him. He and Nijinsky cut a poetic picture of man and horse in full flow, but he needed raw force to secure some of his most famous wins.

“Well,” Piggott says, “it was important to win. The Minstrel was a very tough horse. He had to be – those three races he won [the Derby, the Irish Derby and the King George] in the summer of 1977 were hard. Roberto [who won the Derby in 1972] was different. You had to make him do it.”

Piggott underplays his savage use of the whip. “You couldn’t have used it like that these days,” he admits. “But I never really hurt the horses. It seemed like I was whacking them but it never was as bad as it looked.”

Could he have won the Derby on Roberto and The Minstrel if he had used a modern whip? Piggott pats me kindly. “Well … the other jockeys would have had the same whip …”

I slap my dumb head. Piggott laughs, a little wheezing cackle. “Exactly. But who knows?”

He grins mischievously when I say that one of my favourite Piggott stories is of his stunt when stealing the whip belonging to the French jockey Alain Lequeux in 1979. There was a furlong to run when, having dropped his own whip, he stretched out and lifted a replacement from Lequeux’s incredulous grasp. It was theft; but it was also pure artistry.

“The other boy [Lequeux] was a good friend of mine. It was a big race, in Deauville, and I wanted to win. It looked like he was dropping out and someone was ahead of him. He knocked the whip out of my hand, accidently of course, so I just took his like that …” Piggott leans across, his face as sly and concentrated as the Artful Dodger. With a cunning pluck of the air he nicks my imaginary whip. “Instinct. I did it just like that. I finished second. He was third. That was the problem. That’s why they put me off. But no rule covers it.”

Whip-stealing is not in racing’s rule book? “I saw it happen again last month. Did you read about it? It was in America – on the old track in Pennsylvania [when, during a race, a jockey, Angel Castillo, lost his own whip and then stole another belonging to Pierre Hernández Ortega]. They didn’t do anything to him. I got a [20-day] ban.”

Lester Piggott brings home Nijinsky after their 1970 Derby victory. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Piggott was banned often in his career. At 18 he was suspended for six months after the racing authorities decided his father, Keith, had persuaded him to endanger other jockeys. Piggott was already famous and, a year earlier, in 1953, his name had been mentioned in a PG Wodehouse story. Were they simply intent on cutting him down? “I suppose so. Today you’d probably get four days. They just did what they liked really. It wasn’t very fair. Of course racing’s much better regulated now.”

Other jockeys seemed a little frightened of him. Did he use that stone-faced aura as a weapon? “Not consciously. I don’t see why they should’ve been frightened. It’s funny you should say that.”

It’s likely that they were in awe of him. “Probably – some of them anyway.”

On Saturday, at the finale to the European flat season, on the richest day in British racing with four Group One races, Piggott will be the guest of honour at Ascot. He will hand out the awards at the Qipco British Champions Day. “It should be terrific. They’ve done well to put all those races together.”

One of Piggott’s closest friends passed on a message that suggested the 366 days the jockey served of a three-year prison sentence, for failing to declare £3.25m in tax, softened him. Piggott looks briefly affronted. “It didn’t make any difference.”

I wait for Piggott to continue, but he is much cannier than me. “Are you South African?” he asks, looking deeply interested in his own question. I am so surprised to end up having a conversation about South Africa that it takes a while to work out the Long Fellow has neatly shifted us on to a different track. I try again.

When he came out of prison was his appetite for life renewed? “I never looked on it that way. It was stupid, really, to be there. I don’t know how to describe it. It was just unnecessary.”

It has been said, even by the Queen and Peter O’Sullevan, an arch Piggott supporter and the majestic race commentator who died earlier this year, that the jockey paid back the tax man from a bank account he had never previously declared. “Oh, that’s rubbish,” Piggott insists. “Really. It is. Who would do that?”

Piggott did something more unbelievable. Twelve days after walking out of prison, at the age of 54, he won the 1990 Breeders’ Cup in the US on a horse called Royal Academy. Piggott grins when I say it resembles a movie. “Or a fairytale. It was great, wasn’t it? I was lucky to get the chance. When I came out I had no idea I would be riding him.”

Royal Academy, ridden expertly by Piggott, surged from the back of the field in a dramatic finish. “I was a long way back because he had to be. He wasn’t really a mile horse so we had to hold him back as long as possible.”

Piggott’s father, a former jump jockey who also won the Grand National as a trainer, was notoriously tough. He was still alive when Piggott won that miraculous race. Did his dad compliment him on any of his 4,493 victories? “Not really. I knew him so well. He only talked about it when I did something wrong. That was the best way.”

After his first win as a 12-year-old at Haydock Park, his mother Iris said: “He is quite a good rider, but will never be as good as his father. Don’t make a fuss. Lester is a very ordinary boy.”

Piggott nods. “She downplayed things – and that’s a good thing.”

Perhaps now, nearing his 80th birthday, Piggott can say out loud what he surely believes – that he was the greatest ever jockey? “You just hope you were. But how can you tell?”

“You’ve had quite a life,” I say to the old jockey.

“Oh yeah,” he smiles, realising that this interview, rather than his life, is almost over. “It’s been terrific, really. I can’t complain.”

Lester Piggott leans over and, with another small pat of my arm, he reminds me of one last salient truth. “But there’s only so much you can talk about.”

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