Scobie Breasley

'Ice Man of Wagga Wagga' who was Lester Piggott's determined rival for champion jockey in the 1960s

Arthur Edward ("Scobie") Breasley, jockey: born Wagga Wagga, New South Wales 7 May 1914; married (one daughter); died Melbourne, Victoria 19 December 2006.

Popularity, wily experience and more than the odd tangle with controversy were the outstanding features of Scobie Breasley's riding career. Determination and a cool temperament allowed him to enjoy dominant spells in both his native Australia and Britain, riding over 3,000 winners in the two countries.

He carved his reputation during the 1960s, part of a golden era for jockeys. His gruelling battles for the title of champion jockey against Lester Piggott, 19 years his junior, were a feature of the decade. Like Piggott, Breasley was often embroiled in controversy. His early days in Australia were particularly rocky. One season he missed all bar six weeks through suspension, and he headed to Britain after discovering that one senior Melbourne steward was convinced he was "bent", a phrase given to jockeys who stop their mounts from winning.

Overall, though, Breasley was a well-liked rider, particularly in the UK - where he rode a Derby winner at the age of 50. After quitting the saddle, Breasley had spells as a trainer in England, France and California, the highlight of his second career being the 1971 Irish Derby with Steel Pulse.

One of the nicknames given to Breasley was the "Ice Man of Wagga Wagga", in homage to his patient riding tactics and his New South Wales birthplace. Riding was in his blood and as a youth he was barred from competitions to see who could stay longest on a wild donkey. Born into a sheep-farming family, one of seven children, he was christened Arthur Edward Breasley but was nicknamed Scobie as a child, after the successful Ballarat trainer Jim Scobie. Noting the boy's enthusiasm and dedication to horses, a friend of his father's said: "That lad of yours is a right little Scobie."

He was no right little student, though, and was working as a stable lad aged 12. A year later he became apprenticed to the Melbourne trainer Pat Quinlan, following in the footsteps of his older brother Bonny. The younger Breasley had his first winner, aged 14, on only his ninth ride in a handicap at one of the country tracks.

His first big success at a metropolitan track came when he was 16 and won the 1930 Sydney Metropolitan on Cragford. Quinlan, the horse's trainer, and the owner, J.P. Arthur, came under fire for allowing such an inexperienced apprentice in a big betting race, but they were unquestionably vindicated. An ominously bitter postscript to the race came when Breasley was suspended for two months for causing interference. It was the start of a series of brushes with Australian stewards; but despite bouts of suspension Breasley was top apprentice in Melbourne for four years.

In 1934 he married his wife May on 5 November, the day the Melbourne Cup is run. He had led the parade for that race before marrying in the evening. His mount Shadow King came fourth.

During the 1942 season Breasley was plagued by three suspensions of 12 weeks, eight weeks and a month. In talks with a stipendiary steward, Alan Bell, to clear the air, Breasley learnt he was regarded as a heavy-betting jockey. This news was alarming: Breasley in his own words was no angel but his malpractices were not as great as this rumour suggested. The meeting with Bell marked a turning point in Breasley's career and he decided to try his luck in England.

He had been a huge success in Australia. Although he never won the Melbourne Cup in 16 attempts, he won a succession of Australia's best races, particularly the Caulfield Cup. He won that race five times including four on the trot between 1942 and 1945.

Breasley's English career started in 1950 at the Druids Lodge stables on Salisbury Plain with the trainer Noel Cannon. His first two rides, at Aintree, then also a Flat course as well as home of the Grand National, were both winners.

Soon Breasley had established a second retainer with Vic Smyth in Epsom and his owner Sir Malcolm McAlpine. That season's Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot on Hyberbole was his first major victory. Not everything went smoothly, however. A fall at Brighton forced him to miss three weeks through injury. Also, his reputation was slightly damaged through no fault of his own other than, perhaps, naïvety, by the arrival of the "Aussie Wing", a gang of compatriots intent on profiting from his inside information. Breasley realised quickly he was being "taken for a ride" and reported the gang, from Sydney, to the Jockey Club. Despite that, he lost his McAlpine/Smyth retainer.

In only his second English season Breasley rode his first Classic winner, the 2,000 Guineas on Ki Ming.

But he returned to Australia in 1952 after a fall-out with J.V. Rank's wife Pat, a renowned heavy gambler, and, to Breasley, an interfering irritant. There he rode his fifth Caulfield Cup winner, Peshawar, carrying the same colours as his first big winner, Cragford. But his return home was a brief one; in 1953 he was lured back to Britain by Arthur Dewar, now in charge at the Druids Lodge stables previously occupied by Cannon.

Next season, the year the great jockey Gordon Richards retired, Breasley landed his second Classic in the 1,000 Guineas on Festoon.

A very bad fall at the tight circuit of Alexandra Park meant he missed the ride on Festoon in the Oaks, in which she finished only fifth. That was small compensation for a horrific accident after which he was told by doctors that his riding career was over: he suffered a fractured skull, paralysed eyes and loss of balance. Amazingly he was back in the saddle after three months, thanks largely, he said, to playing endless rounds of golf. Breasley won 57 races that year: he was to complete a century in 12 of the next 13 seasons.

He turned down the offer to succeed Gordon Richards as stable jockey to Sir Noel Murless and actually signed up for Richards, now a trainer. Pipe of Peace won the Middle Park Stakes, a prestigious two-year-old race, for them.

The following season, 1957, Breasley was champion jockey for the first time with 173 winners but suffered the frustration of riding Pipe of Peace to be placed in the 2,000 Guineas and Derby behind Lester Piggott's mount Crepello, a horse Breasley would have ridden had he accepted the Murless offer.

Breasley was also second in the St Leger on Court Harwell, beaten a length by Ballymoss, Vincent O'Brien's first Classic winner. During Ballymoss's four-year-old career Breasley rode the horse to the Coronation Cup, the Eclipse Stakes, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe - Europe's top races for older middle-distance horses. His partnership with that horse ended badly after defeat in America's Washington International Stakes. Breasley claimed he was told by O'Brien to take the blame for the defeat, and refused to do so.

Perhaps the highlight of Breasley's career came in 1966 when he was approached at short notice to ride Charlottown in the Derby, jocking off with little emotion his friend and compatriot Ron Hutchinson. Charlottown won the race under a typically late, well-timed Breasley finish.

Throughout this decade Breasley and Lester Piggott were determined rivals for the jockeys' championship. In 1961 Breasley beat Piggott to the title by seven winners and by just one in 1963 when the Australian was approaching his 50th birthday.

So intense was the rivalry that it sometimes became dangerous. Breasley was incensed by a race at Wolverhampton in 1960 when he felt Piggott had tried to put him over the rails. He decided to take his revenge on a much more prestigious stage than the Midlands track. Piggott was riding the brilliant filly Petite Etoile in that year's King George. Breasley, riding the outsider Sunny Court, blocked Piggott in on the rails at a crucial point of the race, meaning that the fast-finishing Petite Etoile was unable to peg back the winner Aggressor. "Lester took it like a man," Breasley wrote in his autobiography.

Breasley rode his last winner in 1968 and received huge praise from Gordon Richards, who said, "I have never seen a greater jockey."

He then set up as a trainer at the South Hatch stables in Epsom with some illustrious owners like Ravi Tikkoo, Lady Beaverbrook and Lord Weinstock. He never matched the heights he reached as a jockey, his biggest success being Steel Pulse in the 1971 Irish Derby.

When Tikkoo pulled out of British racing in protest at VAT rates on bloodstock, Breasley moved to France. That spell of his training career ended acrimoniously when one of their horses was disqualified for testing positive to caffeine. Tikkoo claimed it was in revenge for the disqualification in Britain of the French horse Trepan, also for a positive dope test. Aged 63, Breasley then trained briefly in California, but appropriately ended his 12-year career in Epsom. For a while afterwards he acted as Tikkoo's racing manager before retiring to Melbourne in 1990.

Few people in horseracing can boast such a colourful career. Scobie Breasley had his share of triumphs and misfortune in racing, but above all he was one of the most popular characters the sport can boast of.

Richard Griffiths