3 minute read
Former jockey Willie Carson made the Queen laugh out loud on Champions Day at Ascot last year when she inquired if he had been inducted into the British Flat Racing Hall of Fame.
He replied, 'Oh no, Ma'am, you've got to be very old or dead to get into the Hall of Fame!'."
Twelve months on, the Scot with the impish sense of humour joins fellow riding legends Lester Piggott, Pat Eddery and Frankie Dettori who have previously been accorded the honour.
"I thought you had to be dead to get in there. Dead or old. She liked it," William Carson remembered of his quip.
"So, I guess I am old. Very old. It is a great honour for someone like me, because I actually thought in my early twenties that I would never make it as a jockey.
"So, we've done quite well – the boy's done good, really!"
Champion jockey in Britain five times, Carson rode 3,828 winners in the UK, which included 17 Classic triumphs, four of them in the Derby – and the Oaks in Silver Jubilee year aboard the Queen's Dunfermline.
And, of course, there was Minster Son, who took the 1988 St Leger.
"It has never been done before – the only jockey to ride and breed a Classic winner. I've bred two Classic winners, actually, but I didn't ride the other one," he added proudly of Jack Hobbs, who won the 2015 Irish Derby.
The 1970s and 80s were the halcyon days of jockeyship. Piggott was the master, the public's idol and the bane of every jockey who ever rode against him. Eddery had natural ability. Yet Carson was down-home blue-collar.
"I came up the hard way and came up very slowly, and I realised how hard it was to get there," said Carson.
"I wasn't a Pat Eddery, a superstar kid. I had to work my way up. Basically, I was the last lightweight to become a champion jockey."
He was 30 when he became champion for the first time in 1972. A late bloomer, who was not born into racing, he just became a jockey because he was so small.
"Everyone went on about how tiny I was ," he said, "and joked about how I'd have to be a jockey, until I started to believe it myself."
A trip to the local cinema to see a 1954 movie about a youngster who beats the odds to become a top jockey, helped him on his path.
"The Rainbow Jacket," remembers Carson. "I said 'that's me', right from a very early age and I didn't really stick at my schooling, because I said I don't really need to be brainy to be a jockey.
"Jockeys don't need brains – that was my thinking."
Eighty next month, Carson's recall remains undimmed, especially about his formative years, paying for riding lessons with Thea MacFarlane ("Mrs Mac") with his paper-round money.
"She started me off on little ponies at Cathedral Stables in Dunblane," he said.
"Mrs Mac looked after William Stirling's ponies – one of the founders of the SAS – and obviously told him she had this little lad who wanted to go into racing, and she gave me the names of three trainers. I decided, after a bit of research, to go to Gerald Armstrong.
"It took me about five years to get my first winner – 22 crazy horses before I got on something that could gallop.
"You got paid two and six a week and two pairs of wellies a year – that was it."
On Gerald's retirement, his indentures were transferred to brother Sam, who had already established a great reputation as a trainer of boys as well as horses and owners.
Gerald Armstrong, though nothing like as good a trainer as Sam, was an infinitely superior horseman, so the half-a-crown apprentice Carson learned to jump his horses off, to sit into them until they were truly balanced, before driving them with ever-increasing, power-packed rhythm, inspiring them to produce all their reserves. It served him well and his career took off.
"Lord Derby obviously cottoned on to me and gave me a job, because Doug Smith was going to retire, so he took me on as second jockey. At that time, Lord Derby was big. He wasn't quite Sheikh Mohammed, but he was a big owner," said Carson.
Backed by Bernard Van Cutsem's powerful, superbly-run Newmarket stable, he rode a first Classic winner in the 2000 Guineas of 1972, aboard High Top.
"That was a big thing," said Carson, "making all the running in a gale, pouring rain, waterproof britches on… and we got it right!
"The timing of the furlongs was good and we beat Roberto."
He added: "Bernard Van Cutsem was a bit of a mentor to me. He said to me one day, very early on in my career, 'If you're going to be a successful jockey, you're going to be getting some nominations. So go and buy yourself a mare'.
"He is the guy who gave me the confidence and put me on the right path breeding-wise, when I was in my first or second year with Lord Derby."
Carson heeded the advice and eventually bought Minster Stud, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in 1980, where he is still breeding high-class performers.
"We got on very well together somehow. I don't know why an aristocrat should get on with a snotty-nosed kid, but it happened. I'd have gone through fire for him," he said.
By the end of the 1972 season he was a champion jockey. The rides got better, rivalries were heightened, particularly with Piggott.
"Of course, it was intense because Lester was a god, wasn't he?" added Carson.
"I must admit, he made me a better jockey, because I had to keep trying to beat him and I had people in the press saying what a great jockey he was, and all that to contend with.
"We had to improve ourselves to compete against him."
A long spell followed as stable jockey to Major Dick Hern, for whom he rode Derby winners Troy, Henbit and Nashwan, and then later as first jockey to the late Shadwell Stud owner Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum during the days of Dayjur, Salsabil and Erhaab.
While Piggott was famously taciturn, Carson's personality ensured his name would be alive in the public's consciousness long after his career in the saddle ended at the age of 53.
"I was like Frankie Dettori," he said, comparing himself to the gregarious Italian rider. "I was on A Question of Sport and the jungle (I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here). A lot of teenagers don't know me because of a jockey, but because of the jungle," he said.
It will be somewhat fitting that the blue and white Shadwell silks he bore will be carried by Jim Crowley when he bids to keep Baaeed unbeaten in the colt's Champion Stakes swansong at Ascot this weekend.
Carson, who also had tremendous success in the light blue Weinstock colours prior to his days riding for Sheikh Hamdan, is looking forward to the occasion on what could be a magical day for all concerned.
"I could still just sit on Baaeed and win," Carson laughed. "Sheika Hissa is going to be there. I'm having lunch in the Royal Box, which is lovely, and I will have to go down in the winner's enclosure afterwards.
"Of course I'll enjoy it. Somebody giving you a pat on the back is always nice. I enjoyed that bit – a pat on the back."
Yes the boy has, indeed, done good. Not half.
