Chip Off The Old Block?Lester Piggott and his son Jamie
The latest in a line of Piggotts takes to the track on Thursday when Jamie, the 19-year-old son of Lester, has his first ride.
The youngster, raised in Newmarket but now based in County Tipperary with the trainer Tommy Stack, makes his debut in the second race at Killarney, in Ireland’s south-west.
It is a low-profile beginning and rather a late one, since Piggott Sr won his first race at 12 and had already bagged a Derby by the time he was Jamie’s age. The rules have changed in the intervening 60 years but Piggott Jr could have been riding three years ago, had he been determined to do so and able to find a backer. He has, however, spent some of the past five years on the Irish pony racing circuit, where the likes of Ruby Walsh and Adrian Maguire cut their teeth.
“He’s been coming here since he was a kid during the holidays,” said Fozzy Stack, son of Tommy and assistant trainer at the yard near the town of Golden. “We’ll take it from here and see how he gets on.”
Stack added that he was “hoping for a good day” but Pivotal Rock, Jamie’s mount, has won just two of his 23 races over three years and has defied the Group One-winning skills of Wayne Lordan, beaten on him five times this year. Piggott will have to fight for running room in the 15-strong field against established talents like Fran Berry and Billy Lee, both winners at Royal Ascot last month.
He will be cheered on by many watching from Newmarket, including the trainer William Haggas, whose wife, Maureen, is one of Lester Piggott‘s daughters. Jamie rode out for Haggas on several occasions a couple of years ago, though he was never formally attached to the yard.
“He’s a nice young man, a very kind guy and a good rider,” Haggas said. “Very few people will ever be as good as his father but he wants to give it a try and in life you should never regret. He might have got older and thought, ‘Oh, I wish I’d given it a go’. Well, here he goes.”
Piggott Jr has also spent time riding out at the famous Ballydoyle yard in Tipperary, where his father was stable jockey to Vincent O’Brien more than 40 years ago, riding Nijinsky and other champions. Nor does Jamie’s pedigree end with his father; his grandfather, Keith, rode a Champion Hurdle winner and his grandfather, Ernie, won three Grand Nationals in the saddle.
www.guardian.co.uk
