9:30am Tuesday 29th August 2000
THERE are very few sportsmen that you could apply the words genius, maestro and legend to. But without doubt, Lester Keith Piggott is one of those who fits all three categories.
The housewives' favourite when it came to the Derby, he was the jockey you could rely on to get your horse home first.
I suppose I'm lucky enough to say that I know Lester. He is not a close friend by any means, but on the many times I have met him, from Singapore to Sandown, he was always helpful and far more approachable than the aloof loner that he was often portrayed.
Travel the world, and start a conversation about horseracing and, to put it in betting terms, it is a racing certainty that the name of Piggott will crop up.
It seems a lifetime ago, but I was a racing journalist for over 20 years. In the course of that job I was able to visit most of the racecourses in Britain, and many overseas.
Although I had spoken to him on the phone many times, I never really got the chance to get to know him properly until I went on a trip to Penang, a beautiful island off the coast of Malaysia, and Singapore.
Lester was part of an overseas jockeys' team on a tour of the Far East in the early Eighties and, having grabbed a few words with him at the track in Penang, he offered to give me a lift back to the hotel where we were staying.
He threw his saddle into the boot of the taxi and sat with me in the back, while the driver took us on the short journey.
We chatted amicably, and I got my first interview, but when we stopped outside the hotel he sprang out of the car, grabbed his saddle, and muttered: "See to the driver, will you Rog."
I had no choice. Out came a crisp ten-dollar bill, and the driver was more than grateful. As for Lester, he'd disappeared.
So, at last I had witnessed it. Here was the great miser at work. The man of whom it was said would feign deafness until money was mentioned, when his ears would prick up, even from 10 yards across a weighing room.
After that we got on well. After all, you cannot tell the world's greatest jockey of that era that he owes you ten dollars, can you? But I suppose I did learn one lesson from that incident .... never get in a cab with Mr Piggott.
During his stay in Singapore my wife and I got to know the Piggotts well and after we all arrived back in England they invited us to lunch at their bungalow in Newmarket.
It really was amazing, with Lester's vast racing trophy collection filling the place. Throw in a swimming pool and a superb garden and it makes you wish you were six stones lighter and could ride a horse.
If I have one proud moment in my career in journalism, it was the moment Lester decided to make a comeback to race-riding, when everybody believed that he would never ride professionally again.
We had agreed a little code name which, to be honest, I had more or less forgotten.
One day, on my way out to lunch from the agency I worked for in Fleet Street, one of my colleagues said that a Mr X wanted to speak to me urgently.
Trying desperately to fathom who this person could be, I picked up the phone. The voice was unmistakable. "I'm coming back to ride, and will be in action on Saturday."
Whispering, I said: "If you are who I think you are, can you give me a number to ring you back?"
After all, loads of people can do Lester Piggott impersonations, and where I worked you had to be extremely careful of hoax calls.
The return call confirmed that it was Lester, and my story made front page news all over the world and it was not the right time to remind him about those ten dollars!
When Lester originally retired, on October 29, 1983, after riding Full Choke to victory in a race worth a mere £1,389 at Nottingham, we all thought that we had seen the last of the 'longfella'.
A subsequent spell of training and being sentenced to three years' imprisonment for tax evasion could not keep him out of the headlines .... and then I got that call.
He started out again at Leicester in 1989 before finally hanging up his breeches nearly four years later.
Piggott was intelligent but he was single-minded and, above all, determined.
If he thought he saw a horse that could win, he would badger the trainer or owner to "jock-off" whoever was originally booked for the ride. It was a tactic which he used successfully many times and even enabled him to win a Derby.
By the way Lester, any chance of ten dollars?
Knowing Lester Piggott was helpful in my work, but on one occasion it nearly got me in hot water.
I spent three years working in Singapore, where I worked on the racing desk of The Straits Times.
The Singaporeans are racing-mad and I had a tip-off that Lester would be coming over from England to ride. To check it out, I faxed Lester's home, and he confirmed that my information was correct.
We ran the story, but the local Turf Club officials were extremely upset.
"We have not even granted him a temporary licence yet," I was told tersely by one official.
I pointed out that my information was cast-iron. In the end, they had to admit I was correct. After all, you are hardly going to turn down a visit from a jockey with Piggott's crowd-pulling appeal are you?
Some facts about Lester Piggott
Born: November 5, 1935.
Rode his first winner on The Chase at Haydock on August 18, 1948.
He won 30 English classics including nine Epsom Derbys, as well as the Triple Crown - 2000 Guineas, Derby and St Leger - on Nijinsky in 1970.
Total number of British
winners: 4,513
11 times champion jockey.
One little known fact:
Piggott rode Red Rum, later to
becoming synonymous with the Grand National, to one of his three wins on the flat.
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