Robert turned up at the Turnberry Hotel, at the usual time, and took a surreptitious glance at the wine list, which was reputed to be the best in Scotland. After the traditional twilight nine holes, he changed and prepared for dinner with four of his closest friends – Nick; Bobby McAlpine, heir to the large northern-based construction company Sir Alfred McAlpine Ltd; Tim Holland, proprietor of the legendary London gaming club, Crockford’s (whose faithful caddy Mullins sat alone at a nearby table); and Tim Kitson, the young Yorkshire politician who was to become Parliamentary Private Secretary to the future Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath. Eric Cousins joined them an hour later. By now the dining room was full of racing’s major personalities, as it always was for this meeting: the champion jockey Lester Piggott, the professional gambler Alec Bird with his guest Phil Bull, the red-bearded publisher of racing’s ‘Bible’ Timeform, leading northern owner Guy Reed, trainers Geoff Wragg, Peter Easterby, Sam Hall and Harry Thompson Jones, and others.
All through dinner Robert kept going on about the presence of Salan in his race. Eric was, naturally, in a very awkward position. He owed loyalty to all of his owners, and Freeman and McParland were insisting on running their horse. Robert kept muttering darkly about the consequences of Salan beating Brief Star. And as Robert kept looking at the form, Eric was clearly looking at the sack from his old friend and principal owner. He tried to explain his position, but Robert continued to grumble. He was still grumbling the following day when the starter sent the field away. And he was beside himself when Salan hit the front coming to the final furlong. But Brief Star was still there, running fiercely in the middle of the pack. Suddenly she made her break, on the outside, and flew over the closing yards, to nail Salan right on the line, winning by a neck.
Robert, fighting back his overpowering joy, turned to Nick and said cheerfully: ‘Well, that wasn’t much trouble, was it?’ And then to Eric, he said, with a smile of absolute calm, ‘Of course, you knew I was only kidding, didn’t you?’
There was another occasion at Ayr a few years later when Eric Cousins advised Robert to have a bet on yet another chestnut filly of his, Solo Stream, in Ayr’s big race of the day, the five-furlong Bass Special sprint. However, before they went to post, Robert had spent half an hour chatting to the great Irish trainer Mick O’Toole, who could be damned if he could see anything beating his horse in the race. Robert changed his mind and backed the Irish horse instead of his own. He watched the race with Nick Robinson and, with a couple of hundred yards to run, Robert cried in exasperation: ‘Damn! We’re beat.’
Nick, who had stuck to his original bet on Robert’s Solo Stream, replied: ‘Yes, very boring for you. But you’ve just bloody well won the race!’
‘Who’s won the race?’
‘You have! Solo Stream, your horse, remember?’ replied his long-time cohort. ‘I suppose we had better get down to the winner’s enclosure to meet Eric.’ And they bolted down the grandstand back stairs, chuckling as they had done for so many years, like two dreadful schoolboys, who had nearly got caught, but not quite.
By the end of the 1960s Eric Cousins had won Robert fifty races, including a few over the jumps, including the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter. He had also won at Newmarket, the headquarters of English racing. This was with his grey colt Hang On in a contest named the Crawfurd Handicap, about three weeks before the Jockey Club had blackballed Christopher Soames, just down the road at The Rooms. At precisely that time, Robert had become so engrossed with the challenge of actually breeding his own racehorses that he bought himself a stud farm in Cheshire, or at least he bought himself a rather decrepit two-hundred-acre farm in Cheshire with a view to turning it into a stud farm. It was called Swettenham Hall and it was situated in the most lonely part of the countryside to the north of Congleton. Basically, the only serious landmark in the entire area was the giant inter-planetary telescope at Jodrell Bank which you could just see from some of the paddocks. Its privacy, its good, damp, green land and its calcium soil seemed potentially perfect for rearing horses.
Robert attacked the entire project with immense style. He sought expert advice on the quality of the land, and then he ploughed up the paddocks which they judged were in a flood-plain to the River Dane, and he laid down a complete drainage system. He had top architects design his barns, the paddocks were all newly fenced with post-and-rail. He studied the National Stud’s operation at Newmarket, copied what he liked best, instructed his builders to renovate the great archway into the courtyard which supported the grand clock tower. There was a beautiful lawn set into the middle of the yard with a wide gravel path around its perimeter. With his normal brutal adherence to ‘the numbers’ and carefully advised by his father, Robert brought the stud farm up to scratch ‘right on budget’.
When it was finished, the Swettenham Stud looked as if it had been there for ever. As a matter of fact, so did Robert, elegantly tailored as usual, with a Rolls Royce purring in the background as he chatted to his new stud groom Joe French. All around the property the staff addressed him with the courteous familiarity of the more feudal reaches of the English countryside, ‘’Morning, Mr Robert …’, ‘By the way, Mr Robert, would that filly have a bit of a chance at Haydock on Friday?’
He renovated the turreted seventeenth-century manor house, repainting its stucco exterior gleaming white. Flower beds were planted, new trees set around the grounds, while Christine began re-decorating the interior. Robert began to fill the new paddocks with the broodmares he had collected in his few years of ownership. There was Audrey Joan, a sprinting filly he had bought after she had won the Portland Handicap with a smashing victory over Close Call and Forlorn River and who would later produce him four stakes winners. There was his lovely grey filly Flying By, a top-class sprinter who had cost him more than 9000 guineas at the December sales. Soon there would be his extremely tough brown filly Tora Santa, who was by the 1964 Derby winner Santa Claus, and who had won for Robert a big twenty-two-runner maiden at Ascot. Pride of place in the main paddock would go to his beloved Brief Star, heroine of the Ayr Gold Cup.
By the time Robert and Christine moved in, their first son Guy was seven years old and, with his two younger brothers, Ben and Adam, a new and enlarged Sangster dynasty was already in the making. Surrounded by his family, his broodmares and his paddocks and staff, Robert felt for the first time in his life that he had truly come home. Here at last was the environment he loved, far from the daily hassle and hustle that all young businessmen cope with as they take on more and more responsibility from their fathers.
Robert, at thirty-one, was now the kingpin at the Vernon Organization, relied upon by Sangster Senior to ensure the day-to-day running of their empire. But even he was unable to put into profit the division which handled credit betting on horseracing. Robert tried. He even tried to steer some of the more chancy bets of his own through the firm, on the basis that if he was to lose, he may as well lose it to the company. But, being Robert, there was something of quid pro quo to his thoughtfulness. Nick Robinson says it was simple really. Robert only bet with Vernons if it was a real long-shot which probably would not win. He would call Nick in the morning and say, for instance, ‘Put £25 on for me this afternoon, would you? On your Vernons account, Bright Hopes at Newmarket this afternoon, see if he will give you 16–1
Nick would telephone Vernons sometime before the race and ask for the odds, only to be told, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Robinson, we cannot give you better than 100–8 on that horse.’
‘Oh, you could do a bit better than that, I’m an old customer. Ask the manager for me, would you?’
Nick would then hear a rustling and someone call: ‘Er, Mr Robert. I’ve got Mr Robinson on the line. He wants 16–1 about Bright Hopes. She’s only 100–8 on our board.’ And then, in the distance: ‘Oh, that’ll be all right, Joe, give him the 16s.’
Of