Clarkson: bad Leaving Cert, good owner
CONOR CLARKSON is a self-made man and one who has had a passion for racing since his grandfather brought him to his first meeting as a child. He has had the bug since and often dreamt of owning a horse good enough to win decent races. Never in his wildest dreams, however, did he think he’d have one which would win a Gold Cup and two King George chases.
But that’s what happened and, even though the horse has since fallen foul of two bad tendon injuries which may yet curtail his stellar career, the Dublin financier is just grateful that for him, the dream became reality. Anything else will be a bonus.
Clarkson is somewhat unusual in the racing game in that while he’s “been mad into it since I was a teenager,” he is not from a horsey background.
“I’m not from a farm or I’m didn’t grow up with horses or anything,” he says. “It just clicked with me from an early age – National Hunt in particular. I lived quite close to Leopardstown growing up and I was always there whenever racing was on.”
He admits to having a “bad Leaving Cert.” because of his boyhood racing dreams, but success in business allowed him to dabble with horses, initially through partnerships and syndicates – and he has had horses with Tom Taaffe for over ten years now.
He was introduced to the trainer through a good friend, but the initial experience was not a particularly edifying one.
“The very first horse I was involved in never even won a race and I subsequently owned a full brother and a half brother to him and neither of them were any good either, but that didn’t diminish the enthusiasm.
“Around that time I was in Adare one evening and ran into Michael Hourigan and as happens when you meet Michael anywhere close to his home, you’ll be invited to breakfast at the yard the next morning and you don’t get out of the yard without owning a leg of something. That happened to me and I’ve had tremendous luck with him down the years. So, while Tom was party to my first stab at ownership, I’ve always had horses with Michael as well and, please God, always will.
“Through direct ownership and partnerships I had a number of horses with Tom and I got reasonably close to him. He’s very good in that when you go down there, he gives you the full tour and while in the early days I might just have been another owner, he was always very good to spend time with you and if you walk the fields around his place you’ll always notice the number of young stock he has about the place.
“He’ll be there pointing out to you the various horses – ‘That’s a Be My Native’ or ‘That’s a Supreme Leader’ or whatever. But one of the things we decided to do early on was to buy young stock through Tom as foals and through that we’ve been lucky enough to come across a few good horses – those running at the moment would include King’s Advocate, Baker’s Bridge and numerous other good horses that have won for us.”
Over a period of about a year or so, Clarkson says he always got the impression that there was one particularly animal, who he’d seen grow from a foal into a yearling and then into a two-year-old, who Taaffe really liked.
“It was an Old Vic horse out of Fairy Blaze and one day I decided to ask about it. Because of the cost of owning horses I was usually involved in partnerships, but I did buy the odd one on my own and this particular day I just spurted out that I’d like to buy the Old Vic two-year-old. We came to an agreement that was satisfactory to me and I think Tom did well out of it too, so I bought it.”
That horse was Kicking King and he turned out to be the product of a keen youth policy that Taaffe has adopted since taking out his training licence.
“Tom has always had a policy of buying horses young instead of buying established point-to-pointers and that makes the process a much longer one and it involves a lot of patience. I bought into that concept and thoroughly believe in it and as time has shown, his philosophy has been totally vindicated.
“Anyway, the horse didn’t run for over a year after I bought it and in the interim we had to think of a name. It was my daughter Katie who came up with it eventually. She was learning the alphabet at the time and although she wanted to call the horse after herself at the time – not too good an idea for a male horse – I asked her to come up with a name beginning with the letter ‘K.’ She was using a Letterland book at the time and when I said that, she immediately said ‘Kicking King’ and it stuck.
“He won his first 4-y-o bumper at Leopardstown and fairly quickly we knew he was good. Tom always thought he was a good prospect and had huge confidence in him. I’m a fairly patient owner and tend to let trainers get on with the job without interfering, but I’m a great believer that I like to see something in a horse first time out.”
That was how it was with Kicking King and even though, as Clarkson says, he was still “a big, raw, weak horse” he won well that January day in 2002 without really knowing what he was doing and the event was made all the more special when Tom’s wife Elaine had a son – Pat Jnr. (named after his grandfather) the same day.
Even though Taaffe was under pressure to get to the maternity hospital, he insisted on being there for the celebratory photographs, telling the delighted owner ‘I want to be in the picture because I’m telling you that one day that horse will win a Gold Cup.’ A disbelieving Clarkson didn’t argue, but was even more gobsmacked when the legendary Mick O’Toole took him aside in the winner’s enclosure and said: ‘you’re one lucky man. You’ve got something special there.’
“It is only in retrospect that you remember these things as being significant, but we had no idea of the rollercoaster we were climbing aboard,” he laughs.
The Kicking King legend began growing from there. Into the 2002/3 season he took scalps like Central House and The Dark Flasher and the form continued into 2003/4 when, despite a rare error when falling at Leopardstown at Christmas, he went to the Arkle at Cheltenham a well-fancied hope. He finished second there by just a length to Well Chief (who was in receipt of 5 lbs) and while the connections were a little disappointed at the time, they still realised time was on their hands and that the horse still had a lot of growing up to do.
Into the 2004/5 season and Clarkson says, the decision was taken to “follow the high road” and seek the big chasing prizes. Victory at Gowran over Rathgar Beau and a second place to Beef Or Salmon in the James Nicholson at Downpatrick made himself and Taaffe sit up. “That was the first time we realised we had a Gold Cup horse,” he notes.
A further victory in the John Durcan at Punchestown underlined jockey Barry Geraghty’s opinion that Kicking King would never be beaten by Beef Or Salmon again.
The King George was next up and while the horse made a dreadful hash of the last, he still had enough to gather everything together and won well.
“If there wasn’t that mix-up between Barry and the horse there, he’d have won by half the track,” the owner recalls. “He was brought to a full stop, got back going again and was going away again at the line. To my mind that told me everything I needed to know about him staying three miles.”
Cheltenham and the Gold Cup was the next target, but the rollercoaster kept throwing switchbacks at the connections. “We’d pulled stumps after Kempton with the idea of going for the Gold Cup and that’s something which War of Attrition did to good effect last season, but then everything went pear-shaped. We’d planned a racecourse gallop three and a bit weeks out from the Gold Cup, but then Tom rang me to say he’d run terribly and when he was scoped subsequently we realised we were in deep shit. We made an announcement that he was out and I can’t tell you how disappointed I was.”
Two weeks later, however, Clarkson was out one Sunday morning with his children at the Powerscourt waterfall when the mobile rang and Taaffe was on the other end telling him the horse was jumping out of his skin.
“I was like ‘what the hell are you telling me here’ and he was saying ‘well, he’s only missed a week and a bit and while it’s not ideal, it’s not the end of the world either.’
The Gold Cup was back on and then a few days later Henrietta Knight announced that her three-time winner Best Mate was out of the race with a virus.
“It was just an amazing sequence of events and we then pitched up in Cheltenham and I have to say it was the best sporting day of my life when he won. I was so lucky; my parents were there, a lot of family and friends and the whole thing was just unbelievable. But the thing that really thrilled me the most was the style and the manner in which he won. If he was never to do anything again, I couldn’t complain.
“For someone who came from the Stillorgan/Mount Merrion area and who has a bad Leaving Cert. to prove that I did little other than dream about horses, this was just the greatest thing ever. It was truly a life-changing experience.”
Kicking King went on and won the Irish Gold Cup at Punchestown – “Cheltenham was a good prep. race for that, wasn’t it” – but from there on, unbeknown to the connections, the tide would turn against Kicking King – in a curious sort of way, especially if you throw another King George victory into the equation.
He went to Haydock for the Betfair Chase and a possible tilt at a bonus prize of £1m. for the winner of that, the King George and the Gold Cup, but pulled a shoe in the gluey ground and damaged a hoof.
“That was a terrible disappointment, but we went on to the King George and won. I know he’s a flashy customer what with the way he jumps, but that day he showed he had guts too. We now know that he hurt himself badly somewhere between the third last and the second last, but he hung on under tremendous pressure from Monkerhostin to win his second King George.
“The ground was funny at Sandown that day. There was good to firm in places, it was tacky elsewhere and it was soft in other places and we thing that in trying to deal with that, he strained himself and damaged the tendon. We didn’t know it at the time and I was absolutely thrilled to have won a second King George, but just a few days later Tom said he wasn’t happy with the horse and it turned out he was gone for the season.
“As it was he was out for the year, but this summer past he absolutely thrived and we were delighted with him and were planning a campaign starting at Christmas with an eye on another Gold Cup. But then Tom felt something had gone awry and when we examined it, unfortunately it transpired there was. It is a separate injury from the first one – possibly connected, possibly not – even though it is on the same leg.”
Disappointment reigned once more and this time around, although it is not certain yet, Clarkson knows he may have to brace himself for more bad news down the line.
“I am entirely thankful for what the horse has given me and now that it’s gone you appreciate it even more. We’re not saying his racing days are over because he’s still only rising nine, but the galling thing is that he may have missed out on his prime years. He only really filled into his frame this year and we know he would have been better. I was so looking forward to taking on the likes of War of Attrition or In Compliance, who I have secretly feared for some time, while from the UK there’s the likes of Kauto Star.
“There was the real possibility of an epic Gold Cup and it is terribly disappointing not to be part of it. But it’s not going to happen now and we will wait until the summer to see where we go next.
“But, if for a moment I thought there anything which would jeopardise his welfare, then it will not happen. Also, if I thought we were only going to bring him back to race in Grade 2 or 3 races, then I don’t think that will happen either. He has been a star and that would be unfair on him.”
Conor Clarkson is a well-grounded and normal man, but Kicking King elevated him to a realm he never believed possible. Racing is in his veins and he still dreams of “having another like him.”
But, as he says, the extraordinary thing about his experiences thus far is that he’s had a horse who has won the King George twice and a Gold Cup as well. “He’s done that and not raced beyond seven and I think that will stand to him in time. That will stand to him wherever people talk about race horses.”
