Mick & David Easterby: Racing Syndicates and Racehorse Ownership




Blue Spinnaker 1999 - 2020



Blue Spinnaker 1999 - 2020



In 2002 a horse I’d bought from John Hammond in France got me into trouble with the television people. I can’t really blame the horse though, it was more of a misunderstanding.

That horse was Blue Spinnaker and he would become one of my favourite horses.

Blue Spinnaker was three year when I bought him I got him cheap because he had bad legs and all sorts of other problems. He’d run in France and done nothing on the racecourse but I liked him and was prepared to take a gamble. I paid a couple of grand for him and brought him back home to run in the colours of owner Graham Sparkes. I knew I could get him right but it needed time and so I put him in a field and gave him a year off.

Blue Spinnaker started his racing career for me at Pontefract in a maiden race for older horses and he almost won, beaten a head at odds of 100/1 by a horse trained by my nephew Tim. It was at this point that I knew I had a serious horse on my hands. Within six weeks he’d won at Doncaster and later that year won a ten-grand handicap at Haydock Park.

He continued to grow and strengthen and in 2005 he won the Thirsk Hunt Cup and the Zetland Gold Cup in the space of a month. My apprentice Paul Mulrennan rode him both times.

In May 2006 I found a nice handicap for Blue Spinnaker at York and I strongly fancied him to win, which he did nicely in front of the Channel 4 Racing cameras. It was at this point that the trouble began.

After the race the Channel 4 presenter, Alastair Down, asked me for an interview. He wanted me to recount the story of how I’d bought the horse, so I did, explaining that he came from John Hammond and how I had paid two thousand pounds for him, which I considered to be a bargain. Alastair then asked me if I was going to go back to France to buy another horse from John.

I just gave him an honest answer.

“I spoke to John the other day and I asked him if he’d sell me another ‘oss", I began. "But he said no, I'm not selling you another, you’ve made a c*** of me once, you’re not going to make a c*** of me again”.

I was expecting another question but nothing.

Silence.

Someone shouted to cut to a break and the interview was abruptly terminated, and I was told that I couldn’t use those words on the television. After the commercial break Channel 4 issued an apology as they had been inundated with complaints!

I had no idea I’d upset anyone. It’s an old Yorkshire word derived from Anglo-Saxon and it means a ‘silly bugger’. I have a friend who I’ve called a c*** every day of his life and we’ve thought nothing of it. For my troubles I got a letter telling me that I mustn’t use such language in television interviews again. They didn’t fine me but nobody dare put me on live telly for about five years afterwards. No matter what I won, they wouldn’t talk to me. It’s all blown over now, and the presenters will readily pull me in for a chat but you can see that they’re never comfortable until it’s over. I can often see the sweat pouring off them wondering what I might say. Just tell it as it is, that’s what I’ve always done.

As for Blue Spinnaker, he went on to win more races. He retired at the end of 2011, and spent nine years as a nanny horse looking after yearling fillies in a field at Mill House Farm. He was brilliant and he’d guard them and nurture them, and in return they’d tease him and pull his tail. By the end of every summer, when his latest crop of babies had come in for training, he’d just have a little stump of a tail left. He had a good life and lived in what I thought was the safest paddock in England.

Sadly the story of Blue Spinnaker would have an unhappy ending. One morning there came a report of horses on the road at the foot of Bulmer Bank. The yearlings had escaped from the field and with them was their nanny horse, Blue Spinnaker. The 21 year old was a terrible state with a badly broken leg. The horse was in agony and there was no other option than to put him down on the spot.

Once the horses were moved back to safety it was time to see how they had got out of the field, and the scene that awaited was a shock to say the least. The gate to the paddock lay bent on the ground with a bow in the middle. First thoughts were that a large vehicle had rammed it but there were no tyre tracks from the field.

I can only guess as to what had occurred that night, but it was highly likely that it was poachers. We’ve been plagued by them for years, coming in large vehicles with lights and dogs to kill whatever they can find. I think dogs had been released and they’d chased the horses who had fled in terror. In an attempt to escape they'd tried to get out of the gate by charging at it, the first horse to collide with the gate being Blue Spinnaker. He’d crashed through at speed and the fillies had followed, and somehow, with a broken leg, he’d led them to safety quarter of a mile away.

Blue Spinnaker saved his pals but in doing so he lost his life.





Posted: Sunday 04 October 2020

© M & D Easterby Racing