Jimmy Fitzgerald - A True Giant of the Turf

The end of the 2018 Cheltenham Festival and this year’s Gold Cup got me thinking back to 1985 when Forgive ‘N Forget, trained by adopted Yorkshireman Jimmy Fitzgerald, won jump racing’s ‘Blue Riband’ race. This month’s article is a short look back on the Irishman’s career and some of the great horses he trained.

It will be 14 years this October since Jimmy Fitzgerald sadly passed way after a long illness, at just 69. For me and many others who began their racing and betting journey in the mid to late 1980s. He was part of our life and we remember him fondly. But for those of the younger generation you may have not realised just how great a trainer he was.

Born in 1935, ironically in the Tipperary village of Horse and Jockey now officially known by its Irish name ‘An Marcach’, which literally means ‘the rider’. Jimmy Fitzgerald was somehow always destined to work in horse racing.

He left his native Ireland as a teenager, according to the late Tom O’Ryan, “on the back of a party dare”, and well dare or not, it certainly paid off for the Tipperary man who worked as a stable lad for Ripon trainer Bobby Renton and led up the 1956 Scottish Grand National Winner Bar Point. A race which would also provide him with his biggest win as a jockey a decade later.

A relatively successful career in the saddle followed with 123 winners, including victory in the 1965 Scottish National on Brasher, which was the last Scottish National to be run at the now defunct Bogside racecourse in Ayrshire. Sadly, the ‘ups and downs’ of being a jumps jockey here exemplified the following year when Fitzgerald fractured his skull in terrible fall, which brought an end to his riding career at the age of 31.

Not long after he turned his hand to training and starting out from his Norton Grange stable, near Malton, in the late-summer of 1969, with just four horses. He had his first winner, with only his second ever runner, when the aptly named Archer hit the target at Market Rasen.

His journey to training greatness had begun as he would turn his Norton Grange yard into what Tom O’Ryan described as a “centre of excellence’.

Not just in equine terms but as great grounding for future jockeys and trainers.

The Trainer the Bookies Feared

The Fitzgerald yard was a notable gambling stable that’s for sure and in fact some of the best executed gambles of the 1980s were planned out of Norton Grange.

I will mention two of the biggest ones here: Forgive ‘N Forget when winning the Coral Golden Hurdle Final at the Cheltenham Festival in 1983 and Galway Blaze when landing an ante-post gamble to take the 1985 Hennessey Gold Cup at odds of 11/2. It’s with the latter that I will begin.

Galway Blaze has become a bit of forgotten horse but I doubt there has ever been an easier winner of the old Hennessey Gold Cup than the 9-year-old. Watch the video of the race

with Mark Dwyer looking around and behind him coming to four out with his horse tanking along on the heels of the leaders before finally winning the race by an easy 10 lengths, still being hard held by his jockey Mark Dwyer.
He was fairly lightly raced for his age and hadn’t been the easiest horse to keep sound. But Fitzgerald somehow managed to get him into the race off just 10st. Looking back in hindsight the horse was the biggest handicap certainty of all time.

Still it was a testimony to the brilliance of the trainer to be able to get him to win a race like the Hennessey Gold Cup on the back of such a long absence after just on prep run at Market Rasen. As soon as the bookies opened the ante-post betting on the race he was being backed down from 33/1 down to single figure odds on the day, I think I managed to get on at 16s, even though there was a doubt on the morning of the race as to whether he would actually run.

His jockey Mark Dwyer believed that Galway Blaze was as good as Gold Cup Winners Forgive ‘n Forget and Jodami and I have to say I was of the opinion that he would have won a Gold Cup if he had kept sound. Sadly, my theory would never get a chance to be tested as we never saw Galway Blaze on the racecourse again after his Newbury win.

Forgive ‘n Forget is of course rightly known as the winner of the 1985 Cheltenham Gold Cup who sadly lost his life in the same race when still in contention three years later. But slightly forgotten is the almighty gamble that he landed to win, what is now known as the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle, at the 1983 Cheltenham Festival. Watch the race here:

Fitzgerald and owner Tim Kilroe worked on a plan to land one of the most competitive handicaps at Cheltenham. Lest we forget but Forgive ‘n Forget had been bought from legendary gambler Barney Curley which plenty of bookmakers were not aware of.

The Forgive ‘N Forget purchase all came about after the death of Baby King at Kempton, a horse Fitzgerald always considered to be the best horse he had ever trained. After the sad loss of such an exciting young chaser. Curley rang to offer condolences to Fitzgerald and told him he had a horse that could fill the gap left by Baby King’s untimely demise. The rest, as they say is now racing history.
As soon as the ante-post betting on the race opened the horse was backed off the boards and was sent off at odds of just 5/2 in a field of 23 runners with a 19-year-old jockey Mark Dwyer in the saddle. The coolness that the jockey would show that day in producing the horse to win at just the right time would be in evidence throughout the rest of his riding career.

It still rates as one of the biggest Cheltenham festival gambles of all time with connections reputed to have taken almost £1m out of the bookies satchels.

More Big Race Success

FitzGerald had six Cheltenham Festival winners, including Canny Danny in the Sun Alliance Chase, Danish Flight in the Arkle and Uncle Ernie in the Coral Cup in 1997. While other high-profile jumps racing winners include the likes of Sybillin, a high class two-mile chaser, with wins in the Tingle Creek Trophy and the Victor Chandler Chase in 1993 and Androma in winning the Scottish Grand National in 1984 & 1995. He remains the only trainer to have led up, rode and trained a Scottish Grand National winner.

Although rightly we acknowledge his expertise at training jump horses he was very much a dual-purpose trainer who trained 350 winners on the flat.

Here are just a few of the big handicap winners he had on the level:

1985 – Kayudee – Cesarewitch Handicap – 7/1
1987 – Treasure Hunter – Northumberland Plate – 20/1
1989 – Sapience – Ebor Handicap – 15/2
1990 – Evichsta – Lincoln Handicap -33/1
1990 – Trainglot – Cesarewitch Handicap – 13/2

The latter gained the first of his notable wins in 1990, when he captured the Cesarewitch under an all action ride from Willie Carson off just 7-12 to land another big race gamble for the trainer in the process.

Trainglot would also go on to finish 4th in an Ascot Gold Cup and, like stablemate Uncle Ernie, also went onto land the Coral Cup at Cheltenham in 1996 to show his versatility as a dual-purpose trainer.

Not Just the Horses

Besides the long and successful partnership with jockey Mark Dwyer, FitzGerald was also instrumental in guiding the fledgling career of the mercurial Kieran Fallon. Other leading racing figures to have emerged from the Norton Grange Centre of Excellence included the likes of Ronnie O'Leary, Peter Niven. John Quinn and Richard Fahey.

Top flat trainer Ralph Beckett also spent some of his early career under Fitzgerald, as did Irish trainer Liz Doyle and French trainer Mikel Dezangles. The latter was also the godson of top owner the Marquesa de Moratalla. The Marquesa had a fair few horses with the trainer including Trainglot and Sybillin.

After 33 years with a licence and about 1,200 winners, he handed over the keys to his Norton Grand stables to his son Tim at the end of February 2003.

In Tom O’Ryan’s eulogy at the trainer’s funeral he described FitzGerald as “a giant of the turf, a training legend, a great friend to so many”. It’s hard to disagree with those words or with trainer Kim Bailey’s view that Jimmy Fitzgerald was in the top three jumps trainers of all time.