The Queen’s rider Lester Piggott lost his OBE but won 5300 races

Lester Piggott became the most famous jockey in the world winning the Epsom Derby nine times – and later spent a year in jail.

Jockey Lester Piggott’s famously grumpy expression led to his face being described as ‘a well-kept grave’. Picture: AFP

Lester Piggott Jockey.
Born Oxfordshire, England, November 5, 1935; died Geneva, Switzerland, May 29, aged 86.

-

Only the singularly great in sport are known to us mononymously: Ali, Pele, Shaq, Tiger, Fangio.

“Lester” meant one man. And when the world’s most successful jockey, Lester Piggott, took his mount to the front, race callers would often stop mentioning other riders and concentrate on how Lester was winning again – which he did 5300 times in a career that began when he was just 12.

Saturday sees the 243rd running of the Epsom Derby, as famous in England as the Mel­bourne Cup is here, and run for the first time in 1780, just a decade after explorer James Cook claimed eastern Australia for Britain.

Piggott’s name is synonymous with the race. He won it nine times, starting in 1954, and at long odds, riding Never Say Die, becoming the youngest jockey to do so – a record that stands – before following up in 1957, 1960, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1977 and 1983.

A Liverpool woman, Mona Best, pawned her jewellery so she could place a bet on the underrated Never Say Die at odds of 33-1. She was attracted to its name and, with the winnings, bought a sprawling house on the outskirts of Liverpool with a large coal store beneath. Mona turned the basement into a music club she called the Casbah, opening its doors on Saturday August 29, 1959.

The first act was the Quarrymen, a big break for the band who would play there often. The band changed their name to the Beatles the following year before hiring Mona’s son Pete on drums.

That Derby may have changed Piggott’s life, but probably not. His grandfather, Ernest, was a jumps jockey who won the Grand National event three times and was three times British jumps champion. Ernest’s brothers-in-law both won Derbys. Ernest’s son, Lester’s father, was also a successful jockey and trainer.

With that lineage, a feral determination and anarchic riding style – where he almost stood rather than sat, positioning himself to the fore of the horse – Piggott would change racing. By the age of 10 he was riding horses from his father’s stable and won a race two years later. He grew to 1.73m, tall for a jockey, and with it came the challenge to keep his weight down. Fellow jockeys called him The Long Fellow; ironically just his name would shorten odds and people who knew little about racing started backing their champ.

He won the first of 11 British flat racing jockey championships in 1960, but for the next three seasons, his Australian rival, Arthur “Scobie” Breasley, won the title, as he had in 1957. They were perhaps friendly rivals, but then grumpy Piggott made few friends. Nevertheless, on Breasley’s death in 2006, Piggott described him as Australia’ greatest ever jockey.

Retiring from riding in 1985 with plans to train and breed horses, as his father had done, his life suddenly came undone when Britain’s Inland Revenue charged him with avoiding taxes by routinely having sent earnings offshore since 1970.

It claimed he had defrauded it of about $6m. The Queen’s favourite sportsman was stripped of his OBE and jailed for a year and a day. He returned to riding in 1990, aged almost 55, and 12 days later won the US Breeders Cup Mile. He finally retired a for second time in 1994.

Friend and co-author Sean Magee tried to describe the contrary nature of the cantankerous, infamously stingy Piggott this week, and partly blamed it on the jockey’s poor hearing and speech impediment. One afternoon Piggott took Magee to lunch at an expensive London club, inviting him to order what he wished and refusing to ­accept payment. But Piggott was never billed at that venue.

After a lifetime of abstaining to keep his weight down, Piggott fell in love with ice creams and when buying one in London was asked by the salesman “aren’t you that Wilson Pickett?” (the black soul singer). Piggott agreed he was.

Riding instructions from owners and trainers annoyed him. He mostly pretended not to hear.

London’s The Sun interviewed the retired legend in 2017, reporting that a trainer once told him that his horse needed to be held up as they looped around the track – it didn’t like being in front – and then unleashed for victory only towards the finish.

Of course, Piggott took his mount to the lead soon after leaving the gates. They tore around the track as frontrunners but the horse tired, faded badly and was a spent force in the final furlong. The indignant trainer charged towards his jockey after the race. Piggott saw him coming, and before the man could speak told him: “You were right, you know.”