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Continental-trained animals were easier to exclude or include. Some French horses have made a brief impact in Britain but haven’t appeared here often enough to deserve a place, like Montjeu. I even thought of excluding the mighty Sea-Bird because only once in his eight-race career did he cross the Channel. But since that day he won the Derby with a majestic ease never experienced by racegoers before or since, excluding him would have been plain pernickety.
One complication in assessing the relative merits of horses from different decades is the internationalisation of racing. The King George, now the crucial mid-season European competition for middle-distance horses, was only instituted in 1951. The Breeders Cup series began in 1984, Dubai’s World Cup only in 1996. A top European horse’s racing programme may take a very different shape nowadays. Measuring sticks have changed.
Even after the nationality question, I had huge problems. How can you rank in any kind of meaningful order, for example, sprinters like Mumtaz Mahal and Lochsong and Cheltenham Gold Cup chasing heroes such as Golden Miller or Dawn Run?
The purists would define greatness in terms of race timings or handicap ratings earned, perhaps by prize money won or sheer speed. But while I respect the job handicappers do, the crucial factor in deciding whether horses made it into my top hundred was their impact on the racing public: the watchability factor.
For me, racing is about colour and excitement, athleticism and bravery, and also about emotion so I have sought to produce a book for those who find the little hairs on the backs of their necks prickling as a Frankel walks from the saddling boxes into the parade ring. It is a book for those not ashamed of having shed a tear as Best Mate switched from equine athlete to street fighter to clinch his third Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Here and there I have jettisoned some impressive but virtually forgotten Derby winners in favour of gritty old handicappers. If the anoraks reckon that takes me down the wrong route, I can live with that, taking solace from the Racing Post’s poll in 2002 in which the public then rated their top ten favourite racehorses as Arkle, Desert Orchid, Red Rum, Istabraq , Brigadier Gerard, One Man, Persian Punch, Dancing Brave, Sea Pigeon and Nijinsky. Now you could reasonably expect that Kauto Star, Sea The Stars, Frankel and Denman would be vying with those. Snow Fairy would probably make the list after her recent exploits.
I expect to be criticised for including too many jumpers but one reason why jumping attendances have continued to boom while Flat racing keeps trying to talk itself to death is simply that the jumpers are with us for so much longer, racing from four years old to 12 or more. We get to know them as characters. And if a bias has crept into my volume it is probably to do with the number of older ‘Cup’ horses included from the Flat, the Singspiels, Pilsudskis and Fantastic Lights, who have not been rushed off to the breeding sheds immediately after their three-year-old Classic careers. Hurrah for the late developers: they do a lot for Flat racing, allowing character and individuality to emerge. The Red Hat ladies, I am sure, would go for them.
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