Racing: Anchorman wins award for lads

Dave Goodwin, 51, is a Scot from Largs who might have been an engineer if he had not learned as a teenager to ride ponies on the beach. Tom Townsend, 72, the son of an Irish hunting groom, was brought up among horses in Co Kilkenny and was never going to do anything else. Two men, two lives, two generations. And yesterday in London they celebrated one passion.

Whenever trainers are interviewed in the wake of a triumph, most will stress the team effort involved, only too conscious of the debt they owe to the behind-the-scenes professionals. Goodwin and Townsend shared the award for Stable Lad of the Year at the Horserace Writers and Photographers Association annual luncheon with Jeremy Noseda and Robert Williams, their respective guv'nors, leading the applause.

Stable lad is rather an anachronism of a term that can refer to both the hammiest-fisted youth that ever laid hold of a bridle and the experienced, trustworthy men and women without whom no racing stable would exist. And indeed Goodwin, who was with Sir Michael Stoute and Henry Cecil before joining Noseda, said: "I suppose the title is not very cool and might put today's generation off. But the job is. Once I accepted I wasn't going to play for Rangers I never found anything else I wanted to do."

After what he describes as a slightly mis-spent youth (some of which was spent in a local snooker hall with his mates Lou Macari and Sam Torrance) Goodwin served his time with Ken Oliver before moving south and in nearly 25 years in Newmarket he has ridden some true stars. He was the first man to sit on Shergar; he guided those other Derby winners, Slip Anchor and Commander In Chief, through their formative months.

"I've always thought of myself as sporty, as a kid and now, and I think of what I do as a sport," he said. "I love the horses, but above all I love the fact they are athletes. I love riding them, feeling them become fit and educated, watching their ability and confidence grow, being part of their development. Some are going to be stars from day one, like Bosra Sham, but others take their time."

Memories of Commander In Chief still strike a painful chord. "The biggest crime was that they sold him when they did," said Goodwin. "He was the soundest horse with the most wonderful temperament and if any Derby winner could have been champion at four it was him. Of all the horses who have come and gone, him going was the single worst moment."

Goodwin may have a few regrets that his ambitions to be a jockey were compromised by his not being in a mainstream Flat yard when he first started, but only a few. "Good stable staff are at a premium," he said. "Kids are getting bigger, they stay on at school for longer and they're more inclined to play video games than go outside and run about. The pool from which we draw is shrinking and there are fewer and fewer suitable people, yet there are more and more horses in training.

"And another thing is that the expansion in Dubai has taken a huge number of good staff out of the equation here. It's supply and demand; the Dickensian days are long gone and those who are good at their job are accorded respect."

Townsend's talents are known to a wider audience; Guy Harwood, his boss for 16 years, described him as universally regarded as the best head lad and travelling head lad of his era. Williams, for whom Townsend has travelled horses since he started training eight years ago, said: "I cannot overstate how much I value him, his knowledge of horses and his way with people. He is well known and much loved at racecourses all over the country."

Townsend, whose father worked for Dermot McCalmont at Mount Juliet, came to England as a teenager just after the war to work for McCalmont's fierce cousin, Atty Persse, at Kingsdown in Lambourn in the days when stable lads were rather less valued than today. "Two shillings a week, your clothes and food, lights out at 10 and no days off," he recalled.

But Townsend survived, to the benefit of trainers like Fulke Walwyn, Bryan Marshall, Geoffrey Brooke and Doug Smith before Harwood and Williams.

At Pulborough, he worked with some of the greats: Dancing Brave, Warning, Kalaglow, To-Agori-Mou. He was too heavy to make a jockey but realised that his destiny lay elsewhere. "The welfare of the horses is the draw," he said. "Being with them all the time. They get to know every move you make and you know them as well."

Townsend has spent a lifetime in the sport and is happy with what he sees. "In my young days we did our two," he said. "These days they do three or four, but you go racing and you see they still turn them, and themselves, out immaculate. They're proud of what they do. It's a good job, it's been good to me and I'll still be travelling them until my body says enough."

Goodwin concurs. "I love the riding, the camaraderie, even the gallows humour. It's a cocktail of a style of life that suits me fine. And this award is an acknowledgement for all of us who do the job." Two men, one passion.