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Today's Racing :

Fred Rickaby was one of the all time greats

David Thiselton
Fred Rickaby, one of the great racehorse trainers in South African history, died over the weekend in his home town of Newmarket in England aged 93.
Rickaby came from a great English racing family and his great grandfather, also Fred, trained the winner of the 1855 Epsom Derby, Wild Dayrell.
His grandfather, Fred, rode the 1896 Epsom Oaks winner, Canterbury Pilgrim. His father, also Fred, won the 1000 Guineas four times. Rickaby himself was the British flat racing Champion Apprentice in 1931 and 1932, but after becoming too heavy changed codes and rode over the jumps.
He has the distinction of having ridden in both the Epsom Derby and the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham.
He is said to have been probably the last person to have ever sat on Hyperion, the Derby and St. Leger winner who became a legendary sire.
His brother Bill was one of the top flat jockeys of his time and achieved a rare 1000 Guineas-Epsom Oaks double on Sweet Solera in 1961 before winning the 2000 Guineas on Privy Councillor in 1962.
Rickaby was the cousin of the great Lester Piggott.
His father’s sister, Iris Rickaby, is Piggott’s mother having married Keith Piggot, who rode a Champion Hurdle’s winner and trained a Grand National winner.
Rickaby served as an RAF fighter pilot in WW II.
In 1947 he emigrated to South Africa and was crowned champion trainer in 1976-1977, two years before his retirement.
Rickaby’s chief patrons were the Saunders family and Cyril Hurwitz, while Michael Roberts was his stable jockey in the 1970’s and they shared in many big race victories.
Roberts recalled yesterday: “He was highly respected and one of the greatest trainer’s we’ve had. He was probably the best I’ve worked for and was unbelievable in preparing horses. He was a very good horseman and an absolute perfectionist. His horses were turned out immaculately and his Summerveld yard was always in showpiece condition. Everything had to be perfect.
“You could never be late for work. When the horses walked to the track the string resembled soldiers going to war, in a straight line. The workriders always had to keep exactly the same order.”
Roberts has always maintained that the Rickaby-trained Met and Queen’s Plate winner, Sledgehammer, was the best horse he ever rode in South Africa.
Another top Rickaby horse he rode was Majestic Crown, whom he believed would have been a great had he not been born in the same year as Sledgehammer.
Other horses Roberts remembered were Abbey Boy, Kruger Rand, Haiti, King Of Tonga and Bold Tropic, although the latter joined Buller Benton as an early three-year-old after Rickaby had retired.
Rickaby trained two Durban July winners before Roberts’ time, both for the Saunders family. Jollify dead-heated with the legendary Sea Cottage in 1967 and Naval Escort won in 1969.
Rickaby returned to Britain in the late 1980s and continued to ply his skills as a self-taught chiropractor and physiotherapist with an encyclopedic knowledge of the horse’s muscle system.
He was married to Molly Rheinhart, a well known journalist, who was the first to write a book on the history of The July.
Rickaby himself wrote two books, “Are your horses trying” and “More trying horses”.

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