Racing: Gifford's life too large for big screen

Greg Wood on the trainer poised to strengthen his link with today's big race

THERE may have been hints of several well-known Newmarket figures mixed up in the arrogant, despicable villain of the BBC's unlamented series Trainer, but as yet only one British handler has seen himself portrayed in glorious, big-screen celluloid. It was Josh Gifford, and he was not much impressed by the final result.

The film was Champions, telling the story of the improbable Grand National victory of Gifford's Aldaniti, and it fell to Edward Woodward to portray the trainer. "I thought the film was very disappointing," Gifford said this week. "We saw a preview before the premiere and I thought it was fantastic, it really brought tears to my eyes, but the actual premiere was very disappointing. They'd done a lot of cutting, and I think they cut the proper parts out."

From Woodward's point of view, though, it must have been an impossible assignment. Method acting is one thing, but it would take more than a few early mornings on wintry Sussex downland to get under the skin of a racing character like Gifford. You would need to have lived the life and laid down the experience, from the moment when a 10-year-old boy left home in 1952 and set out to be a jockey.

"It was in the blood," he says, "my father rode over 100 point-to-point winners before I was born, and I never thought about doing anything else. One day, father came back from Huntingdon races with the trainer, Mr [Cliff] Beechener. and I was showing off on my pony. He came up to me and said, `what do you want to be?' I said, `a jockey', like anybody would at that age. He said `when do you want to start?', I said `next week', and he said `fine'. I was bloody homesick for a long time. I'd ring home every Sunday, and they'd ask, `are you happy?', and I'd say `yes', when I wasn't. But I wasn't going to give in."

By the time Gifford left Beechener for a job in Newmarket at the age of 14, he had already served a three-year apprenticeship with plenty of rides on the Flat, and a year later he rode a winner in the Queen's colours at York. Soon moving on to jumpers, he won the first of four National Hunt championships in the 1962-63 season, forming a partnership with Captain Ryan Price which was not just successful, but controversial too.

And never more so than in the early years of the Schweppes (now Tote) Gold Trophy. Price and Gifford provided the winner in four of the race's first five years. Rosyth won the inaugural running, in 1962, when 41 hurdlers careered around Liverpool's tight course with predictably disastrous results. Stan Mellor was seriously injured in a fall at the second, and the race moved the following year to Newbury, when Rosyth won again, apparently after showing unusual improvement. Price's licence was temporarily suspended, and Gifford was banned for six weeks.

"The old man was told before the race that we'd be warned off if we won, and he said, `what am I supposed to do, not run and tell them we're guilty?'," he says. "I remember getting to Newbury that day and asking the guvnor what I should say if they had us in, and he said, `just tell them the truth, like we always do. No one will ever go wrong doing that, Joshua'."

Two years later, they were back in the winners' enclosure with Le Vermontois, and again the next year, with Hill House, whose 12-length victory prompted jeers from some punters. "Some of them didn't like it very much, but I didn't hear any of the booing," Gifford says. "He was very well trained, the Captain was an artist and he made a very good job of it, but he didn't do any cheating. He told everyone before the race that it would win, so I really can't see what he did wrong. I just don't think people realised what a genius he was."

The ban after Rosyth's second victory was in his thoughts again recently when Leighton Aspell, Gifford's young conditional jockey, was suspended for a week after being arrested, but not charged, in connection with a doping investigation. "Thirty years ago it was an absolute joke, and I honestly think it's ever more of a joke now," he says. "I was big enough to get over it, I was the champion jockey, but when it happens to a young boy like this, what he's had to go through has been so unnecessary and simple-minded. They've gone about it like cowboys."

The Tote Gold Trophy still has a special place in Gifford's affections, not least since he became the first person to win both as jockey and trainer when Deep Sensation won in 1990. "After the National, this is the next race which comes to mind," he says. "It was always a lucky race for us, and if it had really been going my way, I would have won the first six." This afternoon, his runner is Mr Percy, whose claims are obvious after two comfortable wins so far this season.

"To be absolutely honest, I don't believe he's as good as his form shows," Gifford says, "but I hope I'm going to be proved wrong. I'd be a little more confident as well if the race was at Cheltenham, but he couldn't be in better form and he won't let the punters down."

Victory would be something of a relief for a yard which has had a quiet season so far, and may not be overburdened with runners at the Festival next month. Even so, Gifford is one of just five current trainers with more than 100 winners at Cheltenham to his name, even if it did famously take him 18 years with a licence to saddle one at the Festival meeting itself.

It is now almost 50 years since the 10-year-old with a pony and big ambitions set off to become a jockey, and still his only regret is that he did not make more of his talent for cricket. (He did, however, bowl out Brian Lara in a charity match a few years ago, which is not bad considering that Gifford reckons himself more of a batsman).

"Racing has been so good to me, I've loved every second of it," he says. "It's harder work now, it's a young man's sport and owners expect you to go out to dinner, to entertain and be entertained when at my age you want to go to bed at 10 o'clock. But I still enjoy the winners, and I'll carry on until I find out what my children want to do. And anway, I can't afford to retire."