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You are > Home > Killarney memories of the late Robert Sangster
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Thursday, April 22, 2004
Killarney memories of the late Robert Sangster
By: Finbarr Slattery
ROBERT Sangster, racehorse owner, died of cancer on April 7, 2004. Had he lived another 46 days he would have been 68 – just two years short of the allotted Biblical span of three score and ten.
Robert Sangster lived life to the full. He was to racing what Mick O’Connell was to Gaelic football and Christy Ring to hurling – the greatest exponent of them all in the competitive field of horse racing. He lived life in the fast lane and enjoyed the challenges he encountered, picking winners in the sales ring and watching them win races – and big races at that – when the time came to show their worth.
Robert Sangster picked the best to do all the preliminaries – selecting, training and riding – and was one exponent that got one of my favourite sayings: “Good is the Enemy of the Best”, right.
Only the best was good enough for Sangster – MV O’Brien in training and Lester Piggott and Steve Cauthen riding. Cauthen was the whiz kid who took America by storm riding winners. Robert Sangster brought him over to Europe to give us all a chance to have a look at him in action. Sansgter had one great decade at the top rung of the ladder, from the midseventies to the mid-eighties.
Look at the litany of winners he had: four great Irish Derbys at the Curragh along with two at Epson and France and Three Arc de Triomphies. His blue and green colours were known all over the world.
And what happens when he is at the top of the tree and likely to stay there for the rest of his life? Along came the Arabs oozing money from “black Gold” under their feet.
Sangster’s millions couldn’t cope with that. At the Keenland Sales in Kentucky in 1983 Sangster was the underbidder to Sheik Mohammed who paid over 10 million dollars for a yearling at the sales. As things turned out, lady luck was on Sangster’s side as the horse, Snaafi, Dancer, never ran and proved infertile at stud.
The horse also proved that Sangster got it wrong when he claimed that nobody in the world could outbid him. Along came the Maktoum brothers from Dubai to disprove all that. Oil under their feet changed their lifestyle in earnest from herding goats out in the desert to having the world at their feet. One of the Arab Sheiks is reported to have remarked: “I was surprised that Mr Robert Sangster is regarded over here as a rich man”.
Sangster had the great gift of getting along with people and he got along fine with the “Boys from Dubai” as he did with most people. He never lost that essential mark of greatness – the common touch. He was always easy to talk to and very approachable.
I contacted him to write a piece for Killarney Races golden jubilee book, “Horse Racing”, and he sent me a snippet. He had visited Killarney in 1964 to play golf with seven rugby friends. While in town he backed a winner called Priddy Maid in the bookies. Later he wrote: “I ended up buying Priddy Maid and she produced an Irish Oaks winner”. A nice Killarney memory. Robert Sangster had a holiday home in the Bahamas – a regular visitor there was the late Princess Margaret, sister of the Queen of England.
He ran a golf tournament annually out there which was a nice excuse for Mick O’Toole, JP McManus, John Magnier and co to take a break in the sun, something they all look forward to. Robert Sangster enlivened the racing scene on this passing parade in his day. God Rest his Soul.
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