‘I went from bullied schoolkid to winning races for the Queen’
Willie Carson reflects on life in and out of the saddle, an Epsom crash course, and Classic glory for Her Majesty
When 40 jockeys who have ridden in the royal silks line the course for the Queen at Epsom on Saturday ahead of the 243rd Derby, Willie Carson will be one of those at the forefront as the man who rode her last Classic winner – Dunfermline in the Silver Jubilee year, 1977.
With Lester Piggott and Pat Eddery now gone from a golden era of race riding, Carson, 79, is something of a national treasure. From humble beginnings in Stirling and standing 5ft tall and weighing 7st 10lb, he was part of the Flat racing landscape for half a century, riding for nearly four decades and on television as a pundit for the rest.
He was champion jockey five times when that title mattered more to the riders than it does now and he landed 17 British Classics, including the Derby four times.
Off a horse, with his cheeky-chappy persona, he cackled and giggled his way through two seasons as a captain on Question of Sport and, standing on a box, as Clare Balding’s sidekick on the BBC’S racing coverage until the corporation gave up the sport in 2012.
When he began, he was, in contrast, a shy little boy. “I wouldn’t say boo to a goose,” he reflects. “I was the small kid. I was bullied at school. I was always the one sent up the tree to get the apple, but it definitely made me stronger.”
Carson’s riding career spanned 3,828 winners. It began with Pinker’s Pond scoring at Catterick in 1962 and ended with a lacerated liver when he was kicked at Newbury in 1996 – he was 54 and thinking about retirement at the time, waiting for one more good twoyear-old to drag him into another season – and, in all, he broke 36 bones.
When he broke his femur, it was in the days when you had to lie in bed for three months with a weight attached to your foot in a contraption known as the Thomas splint, an antiquated method which had served airmen well in both world wars. Only now, with a first hip operation pencilled in for this summer, is that beginning to catch up with him.
The one constant for the last 42 years, since he bought Minster Stud near Cirencester in 1980, has been his breeding of thoroughbreds. Uniquely, he rode a homebred, Minster Son, to Classic glory in the St Leger in 1988.
Carson remains hands-on, planning all the matings, driving his mares to their assignations, keeping the place immaculate and, when I arrive, he is up to his elbows clearing a blocked drain.
Of course, on Saturday it will be as much about the Oaks he won on Dunfermline in 1977 as the Derbys he won on Troy (1979), when he forsook the Queen’s equally fancied runner Milford, Henbit (1980), Nashwan (1989) and Erhaab (1994).
“Dunfermline won only three races – the Pretty Polly at Newmarket and two Classics, the Oaks and St Leger,” recalls Carson of the Queen’s great filly. “But in Silver Jubilee year – it was an unbelievable story. She was a dour filly, she didn’t have a lot of personality, she was plain and quite manly, but she could gallop and stay. She was good at that.
“Dick Hern [trainer] was more confident than I was. It was before mobile phones. I was living in Eastbury [near Lambourn] at the time and I was coming up the lane to go to Epsom when I met a fellow in a white Austin with no brakes who promptly smashed into my Ferrari. I had to go back and get another car. I’d rung the course to say I might be a bit late, so there was a panic there that I wouldn’t make it in time to ride the filly.”
From midfield on the outside coming round Tattenham Corner, Dunfermline stayed on all the way up the straight under the Carson pump, gradually getting on top to beat Freeze The Secret by threequarters of a length.
Her greatest hour, however, was at Doncaster when she became the
‘I met a fellow in a white Austin with no brakes who promptly smashed into my Ferrari’
only horse to beat dual Prix de l’arc de Triomphe winner Alleged in his 10-race career. From half a mile out, in one of the great St Legers, it was a duel between the two. Piggott had gone for home on Alleged but Dunfermline eventually overhauled him to win by a length and a half.
“Alleged was never beaten again but that was a gruelling race,” recalls Carson. “I have to say, sticks were not spared. There was a stewards’ inquiry because I’d tightened Lester up, so I had 10 minutes of grief. I felt if the stewards had been nasty they could have taken it off me, but when we came out of the stewards’ room, Lester said: ‘You’ll be all right.’”
Two of Carson’s Derby winners, Troy and Nashwan, were outstanding 20th-century racehorses. In 1979, Carson had the choice of Troy or the Queen’s Milford, who had won the Lingfield Derby Trial, but sentiment did not come into his decision.
“Lester rode Milford but I wasn’t worried even though he was ‘God’ in those days, I rode out a lot and it was always Troy for me. Troy won the Derby by seven lengths and the horse he beat, Dickens Hill, won the Eclipse. He was a hell of a horse.
“I always say I won the Derby the day I rode Troy in the Royal Lodge as a two-year-old. He got beat by Ela-mana-mou but that taught me how to ride him. I had one horse to beat that day, trailed him and killed my horse. You had to allow Troy to warm up in a race and build it gradually.
“In the Derby, he came from a furlong behind because the leader went a million miles an hour. But they always go fast in a Derby – the only slow one I’ve ever known was when Greville Starkey got beat on Dancing Brave, dropping him out in a slow-run race.”
Nashwan provided a “once-in-alifetime moment” in a famous gallop before the 2,000 Guineas.
“There were four horses in it,” remembers Carson of that famous morning on the West Ilsley downs. “I gave him a kick in the belly two furlongs from the finish. When I finished, I looked back and saw the other three horses in the distance. I trotted back and asked why they had pulled up? They said: ‘We didn’t pull up.’ And then we knew. The news soon got out, and the lads were queued outside the village phone box at breakfast!”
Carson reckons modern jockeys are more streamlined and polished on a horse than they were in his day.
“That’s all that’s changed. It’s difficult to compare. Today’s jockeys are pretty good. I still think I’d make it in this era and I think today’s top jockeys would have made it in my era.
“The one thing that has changed is tactics. You get true-run races far more often now. There are less tactics involved. Back in our day, there was always someone trying to f--- it up. There were lots of clever jockeys, you had to be sharp. Back then, there was no Mark Johnston-trained horse to make sure they went a good gallop.”
For a man who spent 16 years of “retirement” – the word will never actually exist in Carson’s vocabulary – on television, he reckons he had little aptitude for it.
“If I’d had any talent for it, I’d still be doing it. I was only any good with a leg either side of a horse and I fell into the right places at the right time. I was a dedicated jockey. I’d give the impression that I wasn’t and I’d ask where I was drawn coming out of the weighing room, stuff like that, but it was part of the game. Of course I knew where I was drawn.
“But on the BBC, dear Clare, she carried me, of course she did, she’s such a talented woman. She did it all. I didn’t do enough homework.”
Out in a paddock, Carson plays with his inquisitive foals, still dreaming of a fifth Carson Derby for one of them.
“How lucky was I to end up in racing though?” he asks. “Horses have given me a cherished life.”