Arkle at Navan: The Complete Story

Arkle was a bay gelding foaled on 19 April 1957 at Ballymacoll Stud in County Meath. He was by Archive, a stallion who had failed on the track and stood at a modest fee of 48 guineas, out of Bright Cherry, a mare who had won over jumps. His grandsire was the great Nearco. He was bred by Mrs Mary Baker of Malahow House, near Naul in County Dublin, and nothing about his early pedigree marked him out as a future champion.

In August 1960 he was sent to the Goff's Bloodstock Sales at Ballsbridge and bought for 1,150 guineas by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster. She named him after a mountain near her estate in Sutherland, Scotland. He went into training with Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan, a yard that straddles the Meath and Dublin border. Over fences he was ridden throughout by Pat Taaffe, and the pairing became one of the most famous in racing.

A late developer

Arkle was slow to come to himself. He had a gentle temperament and a habit of crossing his forelegs as he jumped, and it took time before his ability showed on a racecourse. Once it did, the improvement was steep. He finished his career with 27 wins from 35 starts, and 22 of those wins came from 26 starts over fences. Timeform gave him a rating of 212, the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, another horse from Dreaper's yard, has come close, at 210.

The big-race record

The core of Arkle's reputation rests on three Cheltenham Gold Cups. He won the 1964 running by five lengths from Mill House at 7/4, then beat the same rival by twenty lengths in 1965, and completed the hat-trick in 1966 by thirty lengths from Dormant at odds of 1/10, the shortest-priced Gold Cup winner on record. His rivalry with Mill House defined a era of staying chasing.

He was more than a Cheltenham horse. In 1964 he won the Irish Grand National under 12 stone, giving 30lb and a beating to Height O'Fashion. He won two Hennessy Gold Cups, the 1965 King George VI Chase, the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup and the 1965 Gallaher Gold Cup, where he beat Mill House by twenty lengths while conceding 16lb and broke the course record by seventeen seconds. He won the Leopardstown Handicap Chase three times and the SGB Handicap Chase at Ascot in 1966. He carried big weights and gave them away freely, and the Irish handicapper eventually drew up two separate handicaps, one for races with Arkle and one for races without him.

A public favourite

Arkle drew a following that went well beyond form students. He was known simply as "Himself", and fan mail reached the yard addressed only to "Arkle, Ireland". He became a symbol of Irish sport in the 1960s, and the affection he attracted has lasted long past his racing days.

The injury and the end

His career ended in the King George VI Chase at Kempton on 27 December 1966. He struck the guard rail at the open ditch and fractured his pedal bone, yet completed the race and finished second, beaten half a length by Dormant while conceding him 21lb. His leg was in plaster for two months. He recovered but never raced again, and his retirement was announced in 1968. He was used as a hack in his later years and was put down on 31 May 1970, aged 13. The cause is given by different sources as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis.

None of these famous races were run at Navan. They belong to Cheltenham, Sandown, Kempton, Leopardstown and Ascot. Navan's contribution was earlier and quieter, and it is where the next section picks up the story.

Arkle's record at Navan is short but important. The course gave him his first winning day and, the following season, a second win in a different code. Neither of his Navan races was one of the championship contests that made his name, and that is the point of keeping this section strictly to what happened at Proudstown.

The Bective Novice Hurdle, 20 January 1962

Arkle came to Navan on 20 January 1962 having run twice already without winning. He had made his debut in a bumper at Mullingar on 9 December 1961, finishing third, and had run again at Leopardstown on 26 December. The Bective Novice Hurdle over three miles was therefore his third career start and his first over jumps.

Pat Taaffe, the stable jockey, had a choice of Dreaper runners that day and elected to ride the favourite, Kerforo. The ride on Arkle went to a stable lad, Liam McLoughlin. Sent off at 20/1, Arkle beat twenty-six rivals to win by a length and a half. It was the first win of a career that would end with a Timeform rating no chaser has bettered.

Not a chase, and not his chasing debut

It is worth being exact about what this race was. The Bective was a novice hurdle, run over hurdles rather than fences, and it was not the start of Arkle's chasing career. His first run over fences came later that year at Cheltenham, in the Honeybourne Chase of November 1962. The chase wins that built his reputation all came away from Navan. What Navan produced was the launch, in a staying hurdle on a stiff, galloping track.

The Donoughmore Plate, October 1963

Navan saw Arkle again the following season, and in a different guise. He opened his 1963/64 campaign there with a win in the Donoughmore Plate, a Flat race, in October 1963. He was partnered that day by T.P. Burns, a former champion Flat jockey. It was an unusual outing for a horse remembered as a staying chaser, and it shows how much of Arkle's early groundwork was done in County Meath.

His Navan runs at a glance

Date	Race	Code	Jockey	Result
20 January 1962	Bective Novice Hurdle (3m)	Hurdle	Liam McLoughlin	Won by 1½ lengths, 20/1, 26 beaten
October 1963	Donoughmore Plate	Flat	T.P. Burns	Won

Winning margins and prices for the Donoughmore Plate are not confirmed and are left as n/a rather than estimated. These are the two Navan wins that can be verified. Both were early-season or early-career runs, and both came before the chase campaigns that turned Arkle into a household name.

Why a young Arkle suited Navan

Navan is a left-handed, wide and galloping circuit of about a mile and a half, known for a stiff, uphill and stamina-sapping finish. It is widely regarded as one of the fairest tests in Ireland. Barry Geraghty, who rode there for years, called it "one of the best tracks in Ireland or England", a proper test where "the best horse usually wins because there is no hiding place". That description fits the kind of horse Arkle was becoming. A track that rewards stamina and honest galloping, rather than a sharp turn of foot, was a sensible place for a big, raw, staying type to learn his trade. His three-mile hurdle win over a large field was exactly the sort of test that suited him, and the result told his trainer as much.

The defining Navan moment is the win of 20 January 1962. It looked like very little at the time, a 20/1 novice hurdler beating a large field on a winter afternoon in Meath, and it became one of the most quietly significant results in Irish racing.

The ride nobody wanted

The detail that gives the day its charm is who was on board. Pat Taaffe, the stable jockey who would go on to partner Arkle in every one of his great chases, did not ride him at Navan. He had the choice and took Kerforo, the stable's favourite for the race. The ride on Arkle was left to a stable lad, Liam McLoughlin. So the horse who would become the highest-rated chaser of all time won his first race under a lad rather than a champion, and the man who knew him best had picked the other one.

There is nothing unusual in a stable jockey choosing what looks like the better chance. Kerforo was the fancied runner and Arkle had shown little in two previous starts. The interest is in how completely the form was about to be turned on its head.

The winning

Arkle beat twenty-six rivals and won by a length and a half. For a horse with no reputation, in a large field, over three miles of hurdles, it was a clear and unfussy performance. The bare result reads as a routine novice win. What made it matter was the horse it belonged to.

"I think we might have something here"

The most-quoted moment came after the race rather than during it. As Tom Dreaper came down from the grandstand with his wife Betty to greet their 20/1 winner, he turned to her and said, "You know, I think we might have something here." It is a modest line for the beginning of one of the sport's great careers, and its modesty is why it has lasted. Dreaper had trained plenty of good horses and would train more, and he chose his words carefully. Coming from him, the remark carried weight.

That sentence is the heart of Navan's claim on Arkle. The course did not stage his championship days. It staged the afternoon when the man who trained him first said out loud that this one might be special.

The second Navan win

The other Navan moment worth marking is the Donoughmore Plate of October 1963. By then Arkle had made his mark over fences, and he returned to Navan to open his season in a Flat race, ridden by the former champion Flat jockey T.P. Burns. It is a small oddity in a great career, a Gold Cup horse in the making winning on the level, and it kept Navan on his record for a second time. For a course that can only claim two of his wins, having them come in two different codes is a neat piece of history.

Keeping the moment in proportion

It would be easy to inflate these afternoons into something they were not. Arkle's Navan wins were not epics. There were no huge crowds hanging on the result, no famous rivals beaten, no records set on the day. Their importance is entirely in hindsight. They matter because of everything that came afterwards, and because the first of them drew that careful line from a shrewd trainer. Navan's moment is a beginning, and beginnings are best told plainly.

Arkle's legacy is measured first in his rating. Timeform's 212 remains the highest ever given to a steeplechaser, more than half a century after he stopped racing, and only Flyingbolt, another Dreaper horse, has come within touching distance at 210. Every great chaser since has been judged against him, and none has closed the gap.

His name is now attached to the sport's furniture. The Arkle Challenge Trophy at Cheltenham, one of the season's premier novice chases, has carried his name since 1969, when it replaced the Cotswold Chase. The Arkle Novice Chase at Leopardstown, formerly the Milltown, is named for him too. A horse who won two races at Navan lends his name to championship contests on both sides of the Irish Sea.

The tributes are physical as well. His skeleton is on display at the Irish Horse Museum at the Irish National Stud in Tully, County Kildare. A statue was unveiled at Cheltenham by the Duchess of Westminster in 1972. In 2014, a bronze of Arkle and Pat Taaffe by the sculptor Emma MacDermott was unveiled at Ashbourne in County Meath, on 19 April, his birthday, in the town nearest Dreaper's old yard at Greenogue.

That Meath thread is what ties the legacy back to Navan. Arkle was foaled at Ballymacoll Stud in Meath, trained on the Meath and Dublin border, and honoured with a statue at Ashbourne in Meath. His first winning day came at Navan, the county's racecourse. The championship glory was earned in England and around Ireland, but the ground he came from, and the ground where he first won, sits in the same corner of the country.

For Navan, the connection is a genuine one, held in proportion. The course cannot claim to have staged Arkle's best days, and this page has been careful not to pretend otherwise. What it can claim is real and rare. Of all the racecourses in these islands, Navan is the one that saw the first win of the best steeplechaser there has been, on the afternoon his trainer first admitted he might have something special. That is a fair verdict, and it is enough.