30 Apr 2024
St Albans author Aaron Gransby is better known for writing dystopian fiction, much of it centred on our city, but his latest book release tells the true life story of an octogenarian racehorse trainer from Hertfordshire and his most famous horse. Here, Aaron explains how he came to take such an unlikely turn in literary direction…
It was a cold February day at Sandown Park racecourse in 2005 when I watched a tiny horse from the yard of a largely unknown elderly trainer from Hertfordshire take on a former Champion Hurdler in his warm-up race for the famous Cheltenham Festival.
That little horse was called Cool Roxy and he was a 100-1 outsider to win a race that included the great Rooster Booster who had finished first and second in the previous two Champion Hurdles.
For 80 per cent of the race Cool Roxy led the field before finally tiring and being overtaken. But it was a bold and gallant run that really caught my imagination as a fan of jumps racing and it led to a near 20-year friendship that eventually culminated in a book that tells the eventful and emotional life story of one of horse racing’s most unusual trainers.
Since 2022 I have been busy writing fiction which falls in the mildly dystopian category – it tells stories set in the very near future that are based on issues rooted in the present day.
And St Albans features heavily, not just as my inspiration, but also as the setting for much of my first book, Outside. A follow-up to that, Night Games, is due at the end of this year, with another book, also based in St Albans but which I am keeping under wraps for the moment, preceding it this summer.
So it was always going to take a hugely inspirational project to make me put all that on hold and head, albeit temporarily, in a different direction.
But that project was one that had been in my mind for several years and which I had regularly come back to. When I finally decided to go ahead with it, it took up many hours conducting face to face interviews and even longer researching and verifying the sort of facts and figures that you never have to worry about when writing fiction.
Fortunately, my journalism career had stood me in good stead for the fact-checking!
The result is a book called The Fakenham Favourite – The Story of Cool Roxy and the Blackmores, which has been somewhat of a labour of love but one which, I know, has greatly touched the lives of others.
I first met the trainer Alan Blackmore and his wife Pat about a month after seeing their horse race that day at Sandown Park in Esher. Having seen that they trained relatively locally to me, at Little Berkhamsted near Hertford, I approached them to write a magazine article about them.
The Blackmores, who were then in their mid-70s, were immensely friendly and welcoming and insisted we stay in touch. It was the beginning of a friendship that has spanned almost 20 years and given me a great number of memorable times, following their horses, being present at some of their major life events – and even standing in the parade ring at the world-famous Cheltenham Festival with them when their best-ever horse was about to run.
That horse, Cool Roxy, was the one that introduced me to them and their world – which was a long way from my own roots living as a child on council estates around Harrow.
Roxy was small for a racehorse, and had been bought by Alan Blackmore as a foal.
Alan’s wife Pat hadn’t been well that morning and, when Alan had got up early to head out, she asked him where he was going. “I’m going shopping,” he told her, only slightly disingenuously.
“Good, well we need a new fridge,” Pat replied.
“Yes dear,” said Alan.
Several hours later, he returned home with a racehorse instead.
Pat might have been dismayed at the time, but she soon fell in love with Roxy who became the apple of her eye.
And that tiny horse took the Blackmores on a racing journey that included runs at major courses like Sandown and at the Cheltenham Festival. He ran in 77 races over 10 years and he performed consistently everywhere he went, but he reserved his best for the idiosyncratic Norfolk course at Fakenham, where he was to break the record for the most wins – a record that remains intact to this day, some 13 years after Roxy’s retirement from racing.
He won there 11 times, over both hurdles and fences, and such was his popularity at the course that thousands of extra racegoers would turn up at meetings when he ran, just to see him.
He raced in the Blackmores’ red and black hooped colours – reminiscent of Dennis the Menace – and was ridden in no fewer than 70 of his 77 races by the same jockey, Devon-based Chris Honour, who is now a successful trainer himself.
Chris, the Blackmores and Cool Roxy had many memorable days together, but the best of them all came in October 2008 when Alan sponsored a race at Fakenham to mark his 80th birthday.
Cool Roxy was declared to run, but he was getting older and hadn’t won a race in a year.
Pat Blackmore had just been given the news that she was in remission from cancer and HRH the Princess Royal was present, in her capacity as a patron of the Injured Jockeys Fund, even having lunch with the Blackmores before the race.
It seemed as though the stars were lining up for Roxy to win – but surely he couldn’t do it?
In the end, there was no need for nerves. Cool Roxy and Chris Honour took the roof off the grandstand, winning the race easily, as Roxy’s victory made him the winning-most horse in the history of Fakenham racecourse.
If this was a high point in Alan Blackmore’s career, there were unimaginable lows too. His younger son was killed in a race at Market Rasen in Lincolnshire in 1986 after falling from one of his parents’ own horses.
Michael Blackmore, a promising amateur rider, died on his way to hospital after being kicked by another horse as he lay on the ground.
Despite this tragedy, the Blackmores, who only ever had two or three horses in training at a time at their tiny yard, spent 40 years in the sport before Alan finally retired at the age of 90, as the country’s oldest registered trainer.
In his time, he helped launch the careers of many talented jockeys, including dual Grand National winner Richard Dunwoody, and trained a series of good horses which his kind approach always helped to get the best out of.
Hopefully, this will give you some idea of why the Blackmores’ heart-warming and heart-breaking story diverted me from my usual writing path.
It is a story that I felt needed to be told. Alan is now 95 and Pat 93, yet both were able to be present when we launched the book at Fakenham racecourse recently.
Their former jockey Chris Honour and his family came all the way up from Devon for the occasion and many of the Blackmores’ friends made the trip too.
If the book hadn’t sold a single copy, that day alone would have made writing it worthwhile – although fortunately for me it is selling well! The book was also very generously reviewed in the Racing Post and been the subject of a podcast, The Paddock and the Pavilion, which can be heard online and downloaded from your usual podcast suppliers.
While obviously of most interest to those who love racing, the book is, above all else, the inspirational tale of a small operator who took on the big boys, so I would like to think that even someone who only takes part in the Grand National sweepstake once a year will find it an interesting read.
And, as I return to my fiction based on the St Albans we all love, I can reflect on memories and experiences I could only have dreamed of, thanks to two remarkable people and their brave and beautiful horses.
The Fakenham Favourite is published in hardback by Gerard Books at £14.99 and can be ordered via Aaron’s website at www.aarongransby.com, on Amazon or through all good bookshops. Copies of Aaron’s fiction titles, Outside and Destination, can both be ordered through the same sources.
