rolf’s ramblings
by Rolf Johnson
An indignant, no reason given, letter writer (unsigned) posted the following to Ian Balding at Kingsclere back in the early 1980s. Balding was then at the height of his powers. The letter said “You’re a useless trainer. If it hadn’t been for Mill Reef, Selkirk, Mrs Penny, Forest Flower, Glint of Gold, Diamond Shoal, Silver Fling, Silly Season nobody would have heard of you.”
Americans aren’t famed for their grasp of irony but Ian, born in New Jersey in 1938, was much amused by his correspondent who went on, without hesitation: “And you are the meanest man in racing. As for your brother, he’s the scruffiest man on the racecourse.”
Infuriated, elder brother Toby thrust the letter at me spitting, “I’m the meanest man in racing!”
What a double act they were.
The Racing Post obituary on Ian’s death on January 2, began: “Ian Balding will be remembered long after many more prolific trainers are forgotten thanks to his important part in a racing dynasty and to an astonishing colt called Mill Reef.” I was saddened by this mean implication. “Many more prolific” – was it the same writer who sent that letter long ago? The champion the year before Ian’s trainer’s title in 1971 was Noel Murless and the one after Dick Hern, not a bad pair to squeeze between; not men to say ‘after you’. In the modern era it would be like interrupting the hegemony of Sir Michael Stoute and Aidan O’Brien.
And Ian was a pioneer, travelling many of his best horses abroad to win prize money unavailable in Britain. Had they stayed at he would have won more championships.
Do you want to make some money? Get someone, almost anyone I would estimate, to answer the question ‘which Balding brother held the track record for 1000m at Longchamp?’ Some might refuse to take your money because the answer is obvious – Ian’s champion sprinter Lochsong. Offer them double the odds and even those with burgeoning suspicions would submit to temptation.
Answer – Toby’s Regal Scintilla in the 1991 Prix d’Arenberg. Double your money - ask who trained Mill Reef’s first foal winner? By now your punter might be a tad wary but they’d still end up going banco on brother Ian. After all Grain of Truth was bred by Ian’s wife Emma. Her mare Village Gossip was used as a tester to see whether the stricken but healing Mill Reef could do the job.
Grain of Truth, after a frustrating juvenile campaign, was shuffled across Hampshire from Kingsclere to Fyfield, to brother Toby, to scrape home in a four-runner maiden at Folkestone and earn a Timeform rating of 60.
It suited the racing world to see Ian as exclusively flat oriented and Toby as a jumps trainer. Yet Ian rode a Cheltenham Festival winner, Time in the 1963 National Hunt Chase, and trained Crystal Spirit to win the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Festival, the day before Toby won the 1991 Champion Hurdle with Morley Street. And Toby had Group winners on the flat, notably with Decent Fellow.
Ian rode many jump winners as an amateur, and competed in the Grand National at 46: Toby, twice (avoirdupois) the man size of his brother, though infinitely less ‘athletic’ than Rugby blue Ian, never (fortunately) attempted similar – though he did train the winner of National Hunt Chase twice.
The brothers were close, closer than people imagined. Ian’s daughter Clare famously wrote that Ian’s life was consumed by his dogs, horses and family, probably in that order. I interpreted this as Ian having a similar appetite for life as his elder brother, embracing everything they turned their attention to.
Both brothers took over the reins as trainers at short notice as result of premature deaths – Toby from their father in 1957; Ian from the man who would have been his brother-in-law, Peter Hastings-Bass in 1964. His marriage to Emma endured for fifty-six years.
Both stamped their character, their mark, on racing and Ian took the greater honours because he operated in a different field and inherited a different scale of owner. Paul Mellon and George Strawbridge were infinitely loyal Americans; Jeff Smith their British counterpart. And while Toby trained from six different locations (though known generally as the Weyhill, Hants operator, Ian throughout his licence held court at Park House, Kingsclere.
They came together to help organize what would have been one of the greatest coups in the history of the game. Two of the four horses that came from Norway originated with Ian. They returned to this country, under Toby’s aegis, to complete a huge Yankee over hurdles – foiled by the ‘certainty’, Trainer’s Seat who’d run in the 1977 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes somehow getting turned over in a novice hurdle at Haydock. The booty was hundreds of thousands rather than millions.
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that Ian’s first boss Herbert Blagrave, of the ‘old school’, wasn’t the greatest paymaster and chucked Ian a bunch of unimpressive papers as a sop. Ian stuck them in a drawer, casually opening the sheaf sometime later to find he was a major shareholder in Southampton FC. He became a director of the club and the association has been continued by son Andrew who took over the Park House licence in 2003.
People are wont to heap praise in retrospect and that will be the case with Ian Balding – entirely warranted. The template he bestowed on youngsters who arrived at Kingsclere with ambition, was immutable: talent had to be complemented by attitude and application. Thus racing was bestowed a succession of Kingsclere-made champion apprentices and, in time, Derby winning Martin Dwyer and champion jockeys William Buick and Oisin Murphy.
You can’t be unique if there’s two of you. But they don’t make them like the Balding brothers anymore. They carved out glittering careers and raised themselves from the troughs racing visits on everyone who takes it on. They were self-made men: privilege only takes you so far – Ian suggested that he got into Cambridge because he caught the rugby ball the professor threw at him. It took something more to win a ‘Blue’. It took a champion to beget champions.