Robert struggled his way to higher ground. Now they had only five furlongs to run and he could see the favourite Nerograph was out in front with Optimistic on his inside, these two tracked by Powder Rock and Midsummer Night. Chalk Stream was racing about eighth of the sixteen. They swung for home with a little more than two furlongs to run. The grandstand erupted with a deafening roar as the French horse Sallymount went for home first, coming to challenge Nerograph as they raced towards the furlong pole. The commentator called out: ‘It’s Sallymount for France on the outside, Nerograph on the inside, Thames Trader improving.’
Then he added the words which sent a dagger-like shiver down Robert’s spine: ‘Chalk Stream coming with a run along the rails’ And the crowd was on its feet to a man, shouting with excitement as Chalk Stream came to challenge Sallymount in the lead. Now Neville Sellwood went for his whip as he fought to hold the Sangster horse at bay. Chalk Stream was at his boot straps, and Sallymount fought with every ounce of strength he had, carrying his huge weight with immense courage. The ground was running out for both of them, and the post loomed in front. The two horses were locked together with fifty yards to run, and again Lee went to the whip. Chalk Stream gave it his all, running on with the utmost gallantry, and on the line he had it. By only a head, but he had it. Robert Sangster’s face was a photographer’s study in pure joy.
The rest of the day passed in a kind of glorious glow which turned to a bit of a blur, courtesy of Rheims finest. Robert had had a truly sensational start to his career as a racehorse owner, or at least Christine had. But for Robert the entire horse-racing scene represented something far deeper. He knew at Kempton Park on that sunlit spring afternoon in 1961 that he was hopelessly in love with the sport, that he would never stray far from the thunder of the hooves across the turf – win, lose or draw. He loved the sight of the horses, their beauty, and their courage. He loved the planning, the scheming, the second guessing the bookies and the handicappers. And today’s highly profitable endeavour against Major Upex? Well, Robert went for that in a major way. The sheer mischief of it appealed to him hugely. As well it might. Because mischief is a word which is very fitting to Robert Sangster. He has a mischievous face and a mischievous turn of mind, and he laughed about it for years afterwards.
Eric Cousins, by the way, wondered whether Chalk Stream would ever volunteer to run like that again. It had been another very tough race and the gelding had shown many signs of worry in his career so far. Privately, Eric thought that the horse had probably had enough of flat racing and that he would decline to enter for another battle such as the one he had just fought, and so bravely won. And Eric was right. Chalk Stream never won again. Chalk Stream actually never finished in the first three again. Very broadly, Chalk Stream had made an announcement, which, expressed in human terms, was simple: ‘Forget that. I have no intention of ever trying that hard again. I’m strictly here for the exercise.’ All through that season Eric Cousins tried to make him cast that ordeal from his mind. They ran him five times and they traipsed all over the north of England watching him. But he would not try again. The year which had begun with such sparkling promise, rather petered out for Robert.
In his very first season, Robert received a thorough grounding in the joys and agonies of racehorse ownership. He really was put through the mill, with enormous highs, culminating in the most dreadful anti-climax. He learned a million lessons about the wily ways of the thoroughbred racehorse. And he learned one lesson which would last him for all of his life: accept the greatest victory as if you are used to it, and accept the most awful defeat as if it does not matter. For Robert, the season ended officially on II November in the traditional English big-race finale, the Manchester November Handicap. Twenty-nine runners took part. Chalk Stream beat three. But now, as Robert and Christine drove home to the Wirral, there was no air of despondency. Robert’s eyes were on the future. He wanted more racehorses. Maybe quite of lot of them. He and Eric Cousins were not finished yet. Not by a long way.
In fact Eric was already regarded as a ‘hot’ trainer. Earlier that season he had won the 1961 Lincolnshire Handicap with a lightly weighted runner called Johns Court from a massive field of thirty-seven horses. Lee rode him and the horse won by three lengths at 25–1. Johns Court was sensationally fit that day, but he never won again all season. Not that this troubled Eric much. He also won the 1962 Lincolnshire with a different horse, Hill Royal, which also carried about seven and a half stone in a field of forty. Robert’s victory at Kempton was the start of a quite remarkable rampage in this race by Eric Cousins. He was to win it for the next three years in succession. Everybody was talking about Eric Cousins. Bookmakers were griping and moaning, handicappers were furious with him, and the Stewards of the Jockey Club were beginning to get very beady. How the devil could this ex-fighter pilot keep on producing horses so superbly fit on the day, never with as much as one pound too much on the handicap, invariably at a whacking great price?
Robert, of course, was by now right in the thick of it. He had prised loose some family cash and now had half a dozen horses in training – all bought by Eric at the sales, all judged by him to be capable of ‘improvement’. And as he improved them the Stewards became crosser. They usually have a short unwritten ‘hit list’ of trainers they believe are being devious in the extreme, losing races when it suits them, and then flying to victory with light weights and big bets. To suggest Eric Cousins was on this ‘hit list’ of trainers who might be called in to face the Disciplinary Committee would be childish in the extreme. He was at the top of it. And everyone knew the Stewards were watching his every move.
The phrase ‘Cousins and Sangster’ was being heard in high places, as the pair of them toured the North Country and Scottish tracks having what Robert recalls as ‘some of the most wonderful days of my life’. The racing was very much ‘bush league’ but to the young heir to Vernons Pools those races might have been the Derby. Every one of them gave him a charge of adrenalin. He never gave a thought to the beckoning glory of great classic races, with hugely expensive horses and massive prizes. For him, every race in which he had a runner was the Derby, especially when Eric told them to ‘get on’. Robert just loved the local courses, and he loved to drive up to Scotland with his golf clubs, playing nine holes in the long summer evenings after the races, then dining sumptuously with his close friends, preparing to face the enemy (the bookmakers) once more on the morrow.
In those years of the 60s, he and Eric had some mighty ‘touches’. They also had some diabolical strokes of ill-fortune which were just another part of the game, but which the Stewards neither knew nor cared about. Goodwood Racecourse, set high in the glorious Sussex Downs with a long southerly view to Chichester Cathedral and the Isle of Wight, was the scene of perhaps their most spectacular catastrophe. It occurred in 1963. Nick Robinson, by now almost a ‘blood brother’ to Robert, was heavily involved. In fact Nick’s grandfather, the redoubtable Sir Foster, former captain and wicket-keeper for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, fly fisherman and occasional punter, could be said to have been the instigator of the entire disaster. The race was the 120-year-old Stewards Cup, a six-furlong sprint handicap which was traditionally run on the opening day of Goodwood’s July Meeting. It is always an enormous betting race, a regular target for ‘hot’ trainers with lightly weighted horses. It provides also one of the most spectacular sights in all of English racing as a big Stewards Cup field thunders to the top of the hill, the silks stark against the horizon, and then hurtles line abreast down the steep dip towards the grandstand.
Old Sir Foster had actually lost this race three years in a row, finishing second every time with a very fast horse called Deer Leap. The distances were, hideously, a neck and two short heads. Each time Nick and Robert, not to mention Sir Foster, had had a good bet. Each time they lost – in 1961 to the great Skymaster. The Stewards Cup was not much short of a bug-bear to all of them. Now, as the 1963 season headed towards midsummer, Eric Cousins imparted the nerve-jangling news that Robert’s horse