Fifty years on, Arkle is still the greatest

EARLIER this week’s boxing’s ‘The Greatest’ Muhammad Ali, celebrated his 70th birthday and 50 years ago yesterday, National Hunt racing’s equivalent, the peerless steeplechaser Arkle, gained his first victory in a modest novice hurdle at Navan.

“Arkle possessed an athlete’s physical attributes: power, speed, judgement, balance, a quick eye, stamina and the ability to learn, absorb and then react instinctively. Other good horses have had these talents, or most of them, in good measure, Arkle simply possessed them in superabundance,” wrote Ivan Herbert in his biography of the wonder horse.

Paddy Murray, head lad with trainer Tom Dreaper, said that Arkle looked the worst of all the four-year-olds that arrived in the yard at Kilsallaghan, Co Dublin in 1961, remarking: “He moves badly.”