TOMMY Tiernan had his instructions. On the morning of August 4, 1960 he was to load a gangly looking three-year-old colt into a horse box at old Mrs Baker's place in the hills of north County Dublin and set off for the sales at Goff's. Tiernan was a trusted hand at the Bakers and as such he knew the financial imperatives of the day; he knew that his animal, lot 148, had to be sold one way or another. "Get what money you can, Tommy," he was told, "but whatever you do, come home alone."
Tommy's equine mate was hardly a picture, so his job was not easy. Prospective bidders wondered about the scar on the horse's cannon-bone and were uneasy about the lump on his hind coronet. They opened his mouth and looked at his teeth. The experts h
ad seen better. They got him to trot and were iffy about his action, too. But there was something about this fella that people liked. His breeding was good but that wasn't it. Not entirely. It was an intangible quality that made the young Arkle stand out.
It was to bring him not just the status of the greatest steeplechaser that ever lived but also the most loved. The Irish government put his head on stamps. Folk singers and poets wrote ballads in his honour. In a pub in the west of Ireland a triptych hangs on the wall featuring JFK, the Pope and Arkle. In a pub in Wicklow in the east there is a cabinet full of memories, the centrepiece being an item of fan mail from abroad, the address, written in a child's hand, simply saying 'Arkle, Ireland'.
Irish adoration became obsession. Six years after his death his body was exhumed and the skeleton was put on exhibition at the national Horse Museum. As tributes go, though, the one paid him by the people of Britain was far more palatable. The TV Times once conducted a poll to find the personality of the year. The Beatles finished third and fair play to them for that for it had been the year of Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby, Paperback Writer and the album Revolver. In second place was Bobby Moore. In first was Arkle. The year was 1966 and in the hearts of the public, the Gold Cup winner had overshadowed the World Cup captain. Must have been some animal to pull that off. So many people feature in his story and most, sadly, are no longer with us. The breeder (Mrs Baker), the owner (the Duchess of Westminster), the trainer (Tom Dreaper), the jockey (Pat Taaffe); all gone. At the height of his powers Dreaper had 17 lads working in his yard and all bar a few of those have passed away. Only Paddy Woods and Johnny Lumley and one or two others are left.
Woods is a sprightly 60-something, a man whose memories of the great horse are as vivid now as they were when he was works rider for Dreaper all those years ago, which is just as well for his phone has been hopping this week. Nostalgia always plays a part in the build-up to Cheltenham and no place on earth honours its heroes the way they do on Prestbury Park. They'll salute the stricken Best Mate when the Festival begins this week but looming over it all, as ever, will be Arkle. Friday marks the 40th anniversary of his third, and final, Gold Cup victory at the odds of 1/10, the shortest price ever seen at the Festival and ever likely to be seen. "People ask me what I remember of the day," says Woods. "Well, I remember this. We brought him into the parade ring before the race and this tremendous clap went up from the crowd. It was a fantastic greeting and Arkle just loved that kind of thing. He was a real showman. He stopped dead in his tracks, stuck his head up in the air, looked around slowly and I swear to God if he could have spoken he'd have said 'thank you very much'. There was this lady calling out to him and waving her race card. A nice lady. A fan, you know. No word of a lie, but when Arkle walked past her in the ring he stuck out his neck, swiped her card away in his mouth and walked on. Yer woman was ecstatic. She thought it was the cleverest thing she'd ever seen. Shur, we'd seen him do things like that for years at Dreapers."
In the beginning, Dreaper and Taaffe weren't sure what they had in Arkle but they knew he would have to be good to beat the long striding champion of the day, Mill House. In 1963 the Gold Cup was won by the prodigious six-year-old. A giant of a horse, Mill House looked so formidable that he was spoken of in hushed tones. Golden Miller, winner of five Gold Cups, would be spinning in his grave at the sight of this fella, was the feeling at the time. Then little Arkle came along.
In the 1964 Gold Cup, the Irish horse beat Mill House by five lengths. At the Hennessy Gold Cup the following year Arkle did him by 28 lengths then humiliated him again at Cheltenham in March with a 20-length victory. Eight months later they met again in the Gallagher Gold Cup at Sandown. Arkle conceded 16lbs in weight to Mill House but trounced him by 24 lengths. David Nicholson, Mill House's jockey at the time, pinpoints Sandown as the last straw for his horse. "I'm convinced it was the day Arkle broke Mill House's heart."
So, at 3.30pm on March 17, 1966, the few rivals that made it to the start line weren't exactly brimming over with confidence. Michael Scudamore, on board Dormant, looked over at Arkle and saw a perfect specimen. "It was like 'what the hell am I doing down here?'" Terry Biddlecombe, riding Sartorius, said he jumped the first fence upsides Arkle "and that was the last I saw of him." Nicholson, on Snaigow, had his spirits lifted when Arkle hit the 11th fence a clatter. "It was a mistake that would have finished any other horse," he said, "but quite extraordinarily he continued merrily on his way as if nothing had happened. We were soon left in his wake."
The acclaim for the hat-trick was electric. Arkle was invincible and though he was very much of Ireland the whole of the jumps world felt attached to him. He was a genius with personality. A superstar in every sense. "At only nine years of age he had three Gold Cups in the bag and there was no doubt but that he had loads more Cheltenhams in him," says Woods. "We came home that week thinking that he'd win five or six Gold Cups. No bother to him."
The end, though, was not long in coming. In December 1966, horses that wouldn't normally have got within a fence of Arkle managed to beat him at Kempton. Something, clearly, was not right. Woods believed that his horse was indestructible and kept the faith even when the diagnosis was delivered. Arkle had broken a pedal bone. There was no coming back.
"He had to stay behind at Kempton for two weeks after the injury and I stayed with him. Shur, I'd been on the gallops with him every day for three and a half years so I wasn't going to leave him now. I still hoped he'd get back into training and there was a time when it looked possible. But then the arthritis set in and that was that."
By the spring of 1970 the great champion was finding it difficult to walk, the stiffness in his joints causing him discomfort not to mention bringing distress to the people who once revelled in his athleticism. Arkle was in pain and though heart-breaking to the connections the only way to relieve it came by way of lethal injection, administered on the last day of May.
Woods was in England at the time, holidaying with his wife, Phyllis. He'd just taken her on a tour of Kempton and shown her the stable where Arkle was nursed back to health three and a half years before when he stopped into a local newsagent and caught sight of the front page of the Sporting Life.
"Arkle dead, it said. Jesus, it was the greatest shock I ever got in my life. I nearly got sick. I thought he'd live forever, you know."
And in a way, he has.
