HORSE RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Nothing Cheap About Piggott in the Saddle

The horse was named after Mel Brooks, but the race was no comedy. Mr Brooks, the 5-year-old son of Blazing Saddles, broke down near the top of the stretch, a fatal injury for him and a spill that looked just as grim for Lester Piggott, the English riding icon who was only 11 days short of his 57th birthday.

Minutes after the 1992 running of the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, they took the crusty, leathery Piggott to a hospital not far from Gulfstream Park. In the days that followed, Piggott nursed several serious injuries while the hospital staff warded off the aggressive British press. In his more than four decades of world-class riding, even an unhurt Piggott never had much to say to them.

One bloke from the tabloids disguised himself as a white-coated physician--complete with a stethoscope that came from dial-a-fraud--in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Piggott’s room. Then another reporter showed up with a bouquet, acting as though he was delivering flowers. Still later, a phony priest was stopped before he could get past the reception area.

Queen Elizabeth herself might not have prompted such inspired pretending. The monosyllabic Piggott consistently drew a media crowd, and so it was again last month, when he announced his retirement.

“Old Stoneface always had the public hanging on every mumble,” London turf writer John Karter once said.

A Sunday tabloid reportedly paid him for the retirement story, anticlimactic as it was because Piggott, almost 60, hadn’t ridden in Britain in 11 months and hadn’t been in a race anywhere since March. Then other reporters began queuing up, to see which of them would be allowed to buy Lester lunch.

Pushing the check to the other side of the table was as much a part of the Piggott legend as the 4,512 winners he rode. Jack Benny’s reputation as a champion stinter was pure shtick. By all accounts, Piggott was someone with pocket paralysis.

In his prime, he rode regularly in the Washington, D.C., International at Laurel, Md., winning the stake three times, and after a while the jockeys’ room valets got their fill of of being stiffed. The last time Piggott rode in the International, the valets picked up his bag and threw it into the middle of the room, where it went unattended. No one wanted to work for a rider who wouldn’t toss a small piece of his earnings their way.

Piggott was well known for giving friends rides in his fancy cars, invariably showing up with an empty tank so that his passenger would feel obliged to buy the gas at the first stop. Once, Piggott hitched a ride on a charter flight from England to France, then had the chutzpah to bill one of his fellow travelers, as though the plane had been his. Another time, Piggott saw a golf club fall off the back of a truck, which he then followed for miles, hoping the rest of the set would also pop out.

In 1987, Piggott’s stinginess became his undoing. He had retired, for the first time, from riding and was training horses when the British government, saying that he owed more than $4.5 million in taxes, sentenced him to three years in prison. Piggott served a year and eventually paid about $7 million, counting interest. That might have been enough to change the lifestyle of many a man, but Piggott’s wealth at the time was estimated at $30 million.

Even harder than the time behind bars, his friends say, was accepting the distancing that the English royals were forced to put between themselves and the defrocked hero. Piggott’s chances for knighthood are no more, and the medal for the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), which had been conferred upon him by the Queen, was returned, upon request, to Buckingham Palace.

On the back of a horse, though, Piggott never shortchanged anybody. His great-great-great-grandfather had won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1836, and Piggott, to the saddle born, didn’t betray his heritage. He coaxed and he whipped and he finessed many of the sport’s premier horses to signal victories.

He rode Nijinsky, who in 1970 was the last horse to sweep the English Triple Crown; he won 11 British riding titles and the English Derby nine times, once with Sir Ivor, who was labeled the best horse he ever rode. Overall, he won 30 of the English classics, and three times he won the Arc de Triomphe, France’s showcase race.

After five years away from riding, Piggott came back in the fall of 1990. He had been riding for only 12 days when he and Royal Academy won the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Belmont Park. Historically, that would have been a bookend for Bill Shoemaker’s victory, at 54, with Ferdinand in the 1986 Kentucky Derby. But many turf writers had to ignore Piggott to pursue the fatal breakdown of Go For Wand, which had happened half an hour before.

Maybe it was just as well. Even in victory, Lester could be a tough cookie. After being criticized for his winning ride of Sir Ivor in the 1968 D.C. International, Piggott returned to Laurel and won the race with Karabas in 1969.

“When did you know you had the race won?” he was asked.

“Three weeks ago,” he said. “Now . . . off.”

Horse Racing Notes

Top Rung, second to Borodislew in Sunday’s Lady’s Secret Handicap at Santa Anita, is scheduled to run in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff two weeks from Saturday. . . . French Deputy, beaten for the first time when he was second in an an allowance at Belmont Park on Saturday as Eddie Delahoussaye dropped his whip in the stretch, will run in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. . . . Jewel Princess, fifth in the Del Mar Oaks, and Princess Afleet, who is on a three-race winning streak, are the high weights at 117 pounds for Saturday’s $100,000 Ramser Handicap at Santa Anita.