The perfect partner for Piggott
In the first of a series, our racing team reveal the horse that got them into racing…
ONCE is a mistake, twice is a pattern – wisely, Lester Piggott didn’t turn it into a habit.
Piggott, then stable jockey to Noel Murless, spurned the ride on strong-willed, mercurial Petite Etoile in the Free Handicap of 1959 as champion jockey Doug Smith steered her to an easy three-length triumph.
With five Murless horses to choose from in the 1000 Guineas, Piggott again got it wrong, with Smith guiding the steel-grey filly to her first Classic success.
It was an error Lester never repeated, and Petite Etoile’s subsequent fame became indelibly linked to her 24-year-old partner, who won the first of his 11 jockeys’ titles a year later.
In a career lasting four seasons, she was never out of the first two in 19 races, her wins including the 1000 Guineas, Oaks, two Coronation Cups and a Champion Stakes.
Not bad for a filly who began with defeat in a two-horse race and whom Murless described as ‘a right monkey at the best of times.’
For this impressionable primary school racing student, the form figures 111111 next to Petite Etoile’s name were special enough.
But it was the style of her victories – captured in the days of black and white TV racing coverage – which captivated.
Successes in her final three races of 1959 – the Sussex Stakes, Yorkshire Oaks and Champion Stakes – came by less than a length. as Lester played to the crowd with an audacious combination of stealth and showboating.
Off the back of nine straight top class wins, Petite Etoile lined up for the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes in the summer of 1960.
Despite missing her warm-up race due to coughing, she was widely thought to be invincible.
However, on Ascot’s soft ground, her devastating trademark turn of foot never quite materialised.
At the line, she was half a length adrift of the rugged winner Aggressor, trained by
John Gosden’s dad ‘Towser.’
In racing circles, it was an earth-shattering result – and a tearful one in the Hall household.
Another bout of coughing curtailed her season but nothing adds to the myth of a champion more than their reaction to defeat, and Petite Etoile returned to win four more races in her final campaign including a second Coronation Cup.
As Murless said of his little star: “She was unique in every way.”