Lester Keith Piggott, The legend

Lester Piggott, born in Newmarket in 1935, has been, and will continue being for many years, the most famous and the best British jockey of all times.

Only remembering phrases like that of Sir Peter O´Sullivan "You will never see a better jockey than Lester Keith Piggott" or as described in a fabulous way by Fernando Savater in his book "The play of the horses" saying, "for those fans to the turf of the whole world, there many Paul, Bill, Chris, Ives…but only one Lester and even amazes us that when pronouncing it that there are live persons who so much in another world that they ask, which Lester?."

He was known as Old Stoneface, due to that his face seemed make look older to age, inclusively when he was younger, and above all, because his face rarely denoted any gesture whether either of emotion, happiness or of sadness.He was like a stone, and he suffered of problems in the speech and of deafness what made him to be a person little communicative and in spite that he was not a specially affectionate person, neither so loved as he should have been, Lester was a gentleman, he was always following the rules of the game.

One of the peculiarties was his way of riding in races, he was too high to be a jockey what did not hinder to be the best and he rode excessively short, not only for his height but also in comparison with his epoch what made him an unmistakable silhouette above the horse.

There is a anecdote that Fernado Savater narrates in his book in which he speaks that "When somebody commented to Lester that the appearance of his bottom raised was not elegant, the frowning Lester answered, and what on hell do you want me to do with the damned bottom?"

He rode his first winner in 1948 when he was only 12 years old, and from that date his career was unstoppable, being the winner of the statistic of the British Jockeys in 11 occasions.He was the record of the British Classical Races won, a total of 30.

In 1984, the day when he won with Comanche Run the St.Leger in Doncaster, broke the record which Frank Bucle possessed until that date, with 27 victories in British Classical Races.

Moreover, he won 9 Derbys between 1954 and 1983, the first being with Never Say Die, when was still an apprentice, with less than 20 years, three victories in the French Arc and made pass by the winning post 5,400 horses for the whole world, among them horses so known as The Minstrel, Nijinsky, Sir Ivor, Roberto, Petite Etoile, Rodrigo de Triano, Alleged, Comanche Run or Royal Academy.

Lester retired in 1985 and began the career of trainer until he was accused by the British Ministry of Finance of tax evasion due to not having declared earnings near to 4.8 million dollars what forced him to be two years in prison.

The scandal provoked that The Queen Elisabeth II took away from him the Order of the British Empire, which had been granted in 1975, since without the sentence of imprisonment and the investigation which had to be carried out for fraud taxes, today we would be talking about Sir Lester Piggott.

When he left the prison, he again returned to ride in races until his definitive retirement in 1.990 winning in those years some British Classical as the 2000 Guineas, the 2000 Irish Guineas or the Breeders' Cup Mile with Royal Academy on 27 October of 1990, horse trained by the great Vicent O'Brien, without any doubt one of the races most memorable of Lester Piggott.

For all that and for much more, he was called The Master.

What we can assure is that one thing is true, when from the tribunes was listened in an arrival the frenetic shout "Go on Lester", those who had not played for him, it was better that they could start breaking the bet ticket, Lester did not fail.