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What are your favourite moments from Doncaster?

Let's talk about... Doncaster - send in your favourite memories from Town Moor

By Sporting Life

Horse Racing

Sat April 18, 2020 · 5y ago

David Ord and Ben Linfoot recall their favourite Doncaster memories as our focus on northern racing this week continues. We want your stories, too.

What are your memories of Doncaster? Share them with us via racingfeedback@sportinglife.com

David Ord - Valuable lesson in Classic drama

A special place to any Yorkshire racing fan. It stages our only Classic.

It’s a great track too; flat, a long straight and a racing surface that over the years has been the envy of many a groundsman.

It attracts big trainers and good horses all year round. It was here, in a three-runner conditions stakes in 2010, that I got my first glimpse of Frankel. I have two vivid memories of the day, the seemingly effortless way in which he sluiced clear of his vastly inferior rivals, and secondly deciding against taking the 20/1 for the 2000 Guineas that then Ladbrokes PR guru David Williams placed on my laptop.

Some judge, eh?

Encke’s Leger was memorable – but not really for the right reasons. I was there to see my first winner of the colt’s Triple Crown. Try as he might Camelot couldn’t reel in Mahmood Al Zarooni’s colt and the place fell flat.

Dave Ord's Triple Crown feature

It was drenched when Sun Princess ploughed through the testing ground to win the '83 Leger. I remember it well. The Ord family were avid followers of the Dick Hern yard and here she was, his Oaks heroine, fending off proven mudlarks Caringford Castle and Espirit Du Nord with Willie Carson trying in vain not to have to dig too deep.

Owner Lord Weinstock wasn’t keen on running given the deteriorating conditions. His aim was the Arc – which she’d have won too had someone been kind enough to block All Along’s charmed passage down the far rail at some stage.

Double Trigger’s three Doncaster Cups were great, so was Celtic Swing on autumn ground in the 1994 Racing Post Trophy (as was). Group One races shouldn’t be won by 12 lengths but this one was, his domination down the home straight as thrilling as it was complete.

Shergar won a Group One by ten lengths, the Derby. He was one of the first behemoths to get me hooked on this great game but helped me learn a crucial lesson too.

I watched his St Leger defeat in stunned silence. Here was the horse who had thundered down the straights at Epsom, the Curragh and Ascot during a glorious summer, rolling around inside the final two furlongs at Town Moor as Cut Above, Glint Of Gold and Bustomi took his measure.

At the line he was 11 lengths in arrears of the winner in fourth. Beaten by the effects of a long season, the extra two furlongs and three horses he’d have eaten up and spat out in mid-summer.

They’re not machines.

Ben Linfoot - Love for the Lincoln

The best race at Doncaster is the St Leger, but the best betting race on Town Moor is the Lincoln, still, and its place in the calendar adds plenty to the puzzle.

For many punters it remains the first leg of the Spring Double (comprising of itself and the Grand National. I always add the Masters golf, as well, to conjure up an ambitious Spring Trixie).

Gone are the three-mile chases in hock deep mud. Instead, you have a variety of new factors to consider, like preparation. Have they come from the all-weather, Dubai or are they fresh?

Could a stable switch be the catalyst for improvement? Who is likely to have benefitted from developing over another winter? Where are we drawn? Where’s the pace? Who is fit and, more importantly, who isn’t?

Like that first cut of grass in the spring, the Lincoln signals the changing of the seasons. It’s a world where four-year-olds are considered elder statesmen, as opposed to those upstarts in the Triumph Hurdle, and that age group have unsurprisingly dominated the Lincoln over the years.

But that key variable which is so difficult to decipher – fitness, and how they have done over the winter – makes it one of the toughest races to solve. Just nine favourites have come home first in the last 50 years.

Many an ante-post gamble has been foiled. For every Penitent there is an Adiemus, a tale of two plunges. Penitent got the job done at 3/1 in 2010, but eight years prior to that 33/1 outsider Zucchero denied the heavily-backed 5/2 favourite Adiemus by a head.

The Lincoln has had its fair share of critics over the years. But it’s a race that is attracting a higher class of horse once again. And it remains one of the betting highlights of the Flat campaign.

That it’s the very first major handicap of the season, in a usual year, makes it extra special.

Send us your views

Send your favourite Doncaster memories and other contributions to racingfeedback@sportinglife.com and if you’ve any ideas for more topics you want covering over the coming days and weeks please let us know.

Feedback from readers

Dave Parker: Beautiful dual purpose race course and over the years the place of many great achievements and upsets. Shergar being beaten, Camelot in recent times in the St Leger are the two biggest upsets I can think of on the flat and there probably more to write about from the National hunt scene as well. One of my fondest memories were both ridden by Lester Piggott Comanche Run and obviously Nijinsky. In more recent times the memory that stands out by a mile was the beginning of Sprinter Sacre career when ridden by David Bass at Doncaster over fences yes you could say what did he beat, it was just a awesome display of jumping apart from one fence and he won still on the bridle the beginning of a Champion Where as the St Leger normally means off to stud for most of the runners end of racing career, quite a comparison really? Great course fantastic atmosphere and lets hope it continues for many years to come .

Darren Ashworth: I have only been to Doncaster once but I was lucky enough to pick a very special day , the 1985 St Leger. My memories other than the race were that it cost £8 and how tall Lester appeared compared to most of the other jockeys. The magnificent sight of the 'Kentucky Kid' Steve Cauthen winning the last fillies triple crown to this date for Sir Henry Cecil. In the Sheikh's own colours which I still prefer, with stamina ebbing out they hung on for an historic victory.

Tim Williams: Son of Love 1979. I remember that mornings Sporting Life (can we please bring it back in broadsheet form, and dig Geoffrey Bernard up), had it as a front page nap (40/1 sp'd I think at 20/1). The horse has a record of 3 wins from 35 starts, eleven losing runs after the St Leger.

A plea to Doncaster. Go to York and have a look at their Clock tower enclosure. Copy everything they do, making sure you allow people to bring in alcohol for their picnics. You will turn your cheapside into a fantastic success just as they have. And sell three and four day tickets for that enclosure just like York do (four day York Clock tower £30).

Andrew Morris: Hi all, I have only been to Doncaster once - and it was a soaking wet Monday afternoon in 2014 at that - but still I managed to see a superstar. An unraced Muhaarar was well backed to win a Class 5 maiden on proper soft ground. I whacked a whole £20 on him at evens and watched as he sluiced home by four lengths.

I instantly put him in my tracker, but never would I have imagined I had just witnessed the debut of a four time Group 1 winner. A lovely track - and I hope to return again one day. Cheers

Andrew Pelis: Like Dave, I strongly remember Shergar's defeat in the St Leger. In fact, Shergar's only two career defeats came at Doncaster, as Beldale Flutter had beaten him in the previous year's Futurity Stakes.

But that Leger … I was on holiday with my grandparents on the Isle Of Wight, and it was simply staggering to see this bombproof horse trailing in, struggling the further he went down that long straight. Sun Princess too, was a classy runner and she beat a good field to add the Leger to her Oaks win.

But the Leger was considered a potential graveyard for favourites; Alleged was another to taste defeat on Town Moor, at the hands of Dunfermline, while Diminuendo had swept all before her over middle distances in 1988, but again was turned over at Doncaster. In more recent times, the same happened to Camelot.

The Champagne Stakes was always a key two year-old race in the calendar and the likes of Lear Fan, Don't Forget Me and Warning were all top class winners. But none more so than Gorytus, who looked a wonder horse on his first two career starts, both in Yorkshire. Sadly his Champagne Stakes victory was just about as high a peak as he ever reached, trailing in a lamentable and tailed off last of four in the Dewhurst Stakes in his next race, allegedly got-at. He was never the same again.

I also remember the horrors of 1989, when Madraco and others fell in the Portland. The remedial work that took place was fantastic and Doncaster is a top class and very fair track now and a lovely venue to introduce smart, unraced prospects.

Over the jumps, I remember the Great Yorkshire Chase, when future Gold Cup winner Bregawn, under John Francome, was successful. But controversy ensued, as he seemed to race to the inside of a post and in effect, take the wrong course. He kept the race and continued his progression to finish second in that year's Gold Cup to Silver Buck. A year later he won at Cheltenham.

Dave Youngman: Doncaster is a very lovely course in autumn and my special memory of the place go back to 1970 when I was there to see Lester Piggott win the St Leger on NIJINSKY and land the triple crown in the colours of owner Charles Engelhard for trainer Vincent O'Brien. I had watched the son of Northern Dancer win the Dewhurst Stakes here at Newmarket the previous autumn and the first Classic on the Rowley Mile in the spring of 1970. His win in the Derby was so special to me, the race was run on a Wednesday afternoon in those day's and I took my Driving test the morning of the race and past, I then bought my first ever car out of my winnings, it was a Ford Cortina Mark 1, I drove around Newmarket for several years in it afterwards, what did it cost, £250, that was a lot of money in those day's, I was at the Noel Murless yard then and my wages were £15 a week, we didn't earn much but we were taught to look after it, how well we were bought up, lovely times.