4 days ago
Meet the owner aiming to take down down racing's Goliaths in the Derby
If the Ralph Beckett trained Pride of Arras becomes the 246th winner of the Derby on Saturday, bloodstock experts will pore over the nuances of his ancestry to work out how the colt attained the perfect mix of speed and stamina to win the world's greatest flat race.
However, the colt's pedigree is nothing compared with that of his 80-year-old owner-breeder, Lavina 'Vimy' Ackroyd, who, should he win, would realise the eternal dream upon which racing sells itself; David beats Goliath and how a small-time owner-breeder with four mares and just six horses in training can occasionally conquer the sport's behemoths in its biggest race.
Ironically, though, it is the Grand National for which Ackroyd's paternal grandfather, Harry Beasley, was famous. He trained and rode the 1891 National winner Come Away.
With his three brothers (Tommy, Willie and Johnny), between 1877 and 1892, they won the race four times, had six seconds and two thirds from 34 rides. Skip forward a generation and her cousin, Bobby Beasley, won the 1961 National on Nicolaus Silver.
Though Tommy won the National three times, Harry was considered the better rider, winning the Grand Steeplechase de Paris twice. At the age of 72, he won over obstacles at Punchestown on the original Pride of Arras after whom this colt is named.
Despite being born with Aintree coursing through his veins, her father, Rufus, was a successful flat jockey winning the St Leger on Boswell in 1936 and, a year later, the Ascot Gold Cup on Precipitation.
He was Irish but, having been educated at Ampleforth, developed a love for Yorkshire and when he turned to training, he did so in Malton. When preparing Bounteous for the 1961 Derby he hired a local brass band to line his gallop and play as the colt galloped to ensure he was not unsettled by the din at Epsom – (come on Aidan, that's one stone you seem to leave unturned). Bounteous was unplaced but went on to finish second in the St Leger.
Vimy's mother was Lady Alexandra Egerton, daughter of the sixth Earl of Wilton who had come within a week of owning the 1920 St Leger winner, Caligula, and he was partial to a bet. 'I don't think much money actually changed hands in those days, they bet farms,' says Vimy of an era when many of the great estates were partly dismantled at the card table.
In the summer of 1920 Lord Wilton's financial problems had 'worsened' and his creditors said 'enough'. Caligula was sold for 8,000 guineas a week before the Classic.
'My parents came for lunch on the odd Sunday'
Aged three, Vimy was fostered out to the Grimthorpes, the Yorkshire racing family, until she was eight and she was effectively brought up as a 'sister' to William Beckett.
'My mother didn't get on with nannies and the Grimthorpes were able to share a nanny so I lived with them,' she recalls. 'It was strange. I can't say I took it all in my stride but you can't let it affect you when you reach my age. My parents came for lunch on the odd Sunday when they weren't too busy.'
Back then it was probably not a unique arrangement but it is crucial in the Pride of Arras story – when William Beckett's son, Ralph, started training in 1999, Vimy was one of the first owners to send him a horse.
From eight onwards she attended a variety of convent schools which she either did not like or was expelled from, was sent back from a finishing school in Paris after three weeks with jaundice and did a Deb season which did not agree with her rebellious nature. 'It was ghastly,' she recalls.
But she wound up at a secretarial college before going to work for the Anglo-Indian big band jazz leader Confrey Phillips, eventually marrying him. Four years later, the marriage over, she returned to Yorkshire to ride out for her father.
In 1972 the Jockey Club let females ride on the Flat for the first time by setting up a series of 12 ladies only amateur races. Riding a horse called Old Cock, she won the race at Doncaster in 1972 and another at Haydock in 1973.
'Hardly Hollie Doyle,' she says modestly and yet it was the first baby step on the road subsequently travelled by Gay Kelleway, Hayley Turner and Doyle. 'But I suppose it did set the ball rolling.'
She then married Richard Ackroyd and they lived a bucolic life looking after a few animals and chickens in Spain for 20 years. 'When Richard died in 1997 from cancer it took me two years to sell the place but I came back to London in 1999 which is when I had my first horse with Ralph.'
She then returned to Yorkshire and 20 years ago married her late husband's brother David who was much more into racing. 'He was very entrepreneurial,' she explains. 'He made money, he lost money.'
Pre-Vimy, he had been a partner with Robert Sangster in Ballydoyle's first incarnation. Tragically David, who lived for racing, is now in a care home with dementia unaware that his wife's horse is going to Epsom on Saturday.
Her first good horse with Beckett was Puff who won the Fred Darling in 2010 and was the catalyst for her to have a crack at breeding.
'She was an utter failure as a broodmare,' she remembers. 'We sent her to very good stallions but Patrick Cooper [David's nephew and her bloodstock adviser] said we couldn't keep bad mares and she had to go. It's a good job I didn't live at Copgrove Stud where we keep them – if I'd seen her out in the paddock every day I'd have been too attached to sell.'
About 15 years ago to up the breeding ante, Cooper added Pride of Arras's granddam Kitty O'Shea, bought privately from Coolmore, to her broodmares. The colt's dam, Parnell's Dream, was sent to New Bay, who cost just £20,000 at the time – he is now 10 times that.
By any owner's standards Vimy had a good May. Old Cock, the horse she has in training with Ed Bethell which was named after the horse she won the ladies' races on, won at York on the same day as Pride of Arras.
A week later Amiloc, a gelding, won the Cocked Hat Stakes at Goodwood and if Pride of Arras does not win the Derby then compensation could await at Royal Ascot, where she has never had a winner but her father had many, with Amiloc.
This week, though, it is all about Pride of Arras. 'Initially we were very enthused when he won his maiden at Sandown,' recalls his owner-breeder. 'But subsequently the horses he beat did nothing and he had a small issue. The plan was to run again in the autumn but the ground got very heavy so we decided to leave it.
'Ralph began saying we'd start this season off in a novice. He wasn't ready for that so he said: 'We'll have to go straight to Dante.' Then he said that he was only going there because the owner lives in Yorkshire!! Thanks, Ralph! He keeps his cards close to his chest and, actually, that suits me, I don't want him telling me in January I'm going to win the Derby.
'But I was amazed with the way he won the Dante. When Old Cock won earlier in the afternoon I thought:'That's my luck for the day.' Two furlongs out he was boxed in and when Rossa [Ryan] went for a very small gap I thought: 'That's a bit brave.' But he didn't hesitate. You hear others were unlucky, something stumbled out of stalls, another pulled too hard. But you would hope his trajectory, after just two runs, is steeper. Ralph says he's tightened up. Obviously we're very hopeful.
'The National may be in the background but now we want a Derby! Flat is my thing, father was flat. Ernie Halifax came up to me at York and said: 'Shirley Heights [the last Yorkshire owned and bred Derby winner] won the Dante – you've got it Vimy.''
Of course people with blank cheques have made approaches for Pride of Arras. 'Patrick says you're not selling,' she explains. 'It's taken all this time to get a horse this good and what do you do if you sell it? You buy a lot of bad horses instead. He's got a point.'
