Nijinsky at Doncaster: The Complete Story

Breeding and Origin

Nijinsky was a bay colt, bred in Canada by E.P. Taylor at Windfields Farm, Ontario, by Northern Dancer out of Flaming Page. Northern Dancer's influence on modern Thoroughbred breeding has been transformative — virtually every top-class horse bred in the half-century since Nijinsky carries his blood — but in 1967, when Nijinsky was foaled, Northern Dancer was a relatively new sire whose impact was still being assessed.

The colt was purchased at the 1968 Keeneland yearling sale for $84,000 by American minerals magnate Charles Engelhard, acting on the advice of Vincent O'Brien. O'Brien's eye for a yearling was already legendary — he had identified Ballymoss, Sir Ivor, and Larkspur before any of them had raced — and his assessment of Nijinsky was that the colt represented a once-in-a-generation athlete.

He was sent to Ballydoyle, O'Brien's training establishment in County Tipperary, and entered a programme designed to bring a potentially exceptional horse to the peak of his powers at precisely the right moments.

The Two-Year-Old Season: 1969

Nijinsky was unbeaten in five races as a two-year-old, all in Ireland except for the final one. His first four victories were at the Curragh, including the Erne maiden, the Anglesey Stakes, the Railway Stakes, and the Beresford Stakes — each one more convincing than the last.

In October 1969, he travelled to Newmarket for the Dewhurst Stakes, the most prestigious two-year-old race in Britain. It was his first appearance in England, and his first race alongside the best British juvenile horses of the season. He won it convincingly, establishing Lester Piggott in the saddle for the first time — a partnership that would define the following year.

Three-Year-Old Campaign: The Triple Crown Season

The 1970 season was constructed around the Triple Crown from its earliest planning stages. O'Brien and Engelhard were convinced Nijinsky possessed the versatility and stamina to win all three Classics, and the programme reflected that conviction.

The 2,000 Guineas in May was won by two and a half lengths, Piggott producing Nijinsky with controlled precision to dominate the mile at Rowley Mile. The Derby in June was won by the same margin over a field that included Gyr — a colt who had beaten several of Europe's best. The performance at Epsom, navigating the cambers and the crowds on a course unlike any other, drew comparisons with the great Derby winners of previous decades.

After the Derby, Nijinsky won the Irish Derby and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot — two more Group One wins on top of the Classics, affirming his absolute dominance of the European middle-distance scene. By the time he arrived at Doncaster in September, he had not lost a race in sixteen months of racing.

The Two Defeats

No story of Nijinsky is complete without its painful ending. After the St Leger, he ran in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, where a stomach worm infection had compromised his preparation. He finished second to Sassafras, beaten a head, in a finish that ended his unbeaten record. There were those who questioned whether the Triple Crown campaign — the sustained pressure of racing through the summer at Classic and Group One level — had taken too much from him.

His final race, the Champion Stakes at Newmarket in October 1970, resulted in another defeat. He was not the same horse. He was retired to stud, where his legacy as one of the great sires of the twentieth century would far outlast the details of those final weeks of 1970.

His record: eleven wins from thirteen starts. The eleven wins include every major prize in European racing at the three-year-old level. The two defeats came at the end of a campaign of extraordinary length and intensity.

At Stud

Nijinsky became one of the most influential sires in Thoroughbred history. His sons and daughters won at the highest level across multiple decades, and his name appears in the pedigrees of champions across Europe, America, and Australasia. Vincent O'Brien's faith in the $84,000 yearling — substantial at the time but modest by the standards of what followed — was vindicated not just by the Triple Crown but by the decades of breeding success that resulted.

The 1970 St Leger

The St Leger Stakes is the oldest of the five Classics, first run in 1776 on the orders of Lieutenant General Anthony St Leger at Cantley Common, before moving to its permanent home at Doncaster's Town Moor. By the time Nijinsky arrived in September 1970, the race had a history of nearly two centuries and had been won by some of the most celebrated horses in British racing's long record.

The 1970 edition drew an enormous crowd. Doncaster's capacity for 30,000 racegoers was tested, and the atmosphere in the town in the days before the race had the quality of a collective anticipation. A Triple Crown had not been completed since Bahram in 1935 — thirty-five years of waiting for a horse exceptional enough to win all three Classics. Nijinsky was that horse, and Doncaster was to be the venue for the conclusion.

The race itself was not without anxiety for O'Brien and Piggott. Nijinsky had contracted ringworm in the weeks before the St Leger, a skin condition that had interrupted his preparation and left the connections uncertain about his condition. The horse who arrived at Doncaster was not quite as imperiously well as he had been in the summer, and Piggott was under instruction to win without making it a hard race.

He started at odds of 2/7 — the shortest-priced Triple Crown favourite in living memory, reflecting the public's belief in his ability despite the question marks over his preparation. Against him in the field was Meadowville, a colt trained in Ireland by Paddy Prendergast who had won his previous two starts and who represented the best available opposition.

Piggott settled Nijinsky mid-division for the first part of the race, allowing the pace to develop without committing too early. When he asked Nijinsky to move at halfway, the colt responded with the familiar acceleration that had won the Guineas and the Derby. He reached the front with two furlongs to run and held his lead to the line, winning by one length.

The margin was one length. Not five, not ten — one length. There was a moment, as Meadowville made his effort in the straight, when the crowd's breath was collectively held. But Nijinsky held on. The Triple Crown was complete.

The Town Moor Track

Town Moor — Doncaster's Flat track — is one of the most demanding surfaces in British racing. The Straight Mile, used for the sprint races and the early Classic trials, is entirely flat and entirely straight. The round course, used for the St Leger and longer races, extends over a mile and six furlongs in a wide, sweeping left-handed loop.

The critical feature for a stayer is the final three furlongs, which are flat and fast, favouring horses with real staying stamina rather than horses who hold on by reducing pace. Nijinsky's ability to maintain his galloping rhythm through those final three furlongs, even with Meadowville's challenge, was the technical detail that secured the Triple Crown.

Doncaster and the St Leger Tradition

The St Leger's status as the oldest Classic gives Doncaster a particular place in racing history that no other course can claim. From its first running in 1776 to Nijinsky in 1970 to the present day, the race has been the final arbiter of the staying Classic generation each September.

In the context of the Triple Crown, the St Leger is the decisive test. The Guineas measures speed, the Derby measures class under pressure, and the St Leger measures whether the horse who has done all of that through a long campaign still has the reserves to sustain his performance over the longest distance. Nijinsky passed that test at Doncaster in September 1970, and no horse has passed it since.

For the full racing calendar at Doncaster, see our St Leger Festival guide and our Lincoln Handicap guide.

The Moment the Crown Was Completed

September 12, 1970. Doncaster racecourse, Town Moor. Nijinsky passed the winning post one length clear of Meadowville and the announcement that the Triple Crown had been won was absorbed by a crowd of 30,000 with an emotion that racing rarely produces. Here was a horse who had won everything the season had offered, a horse whose brilliance had been evident for two seasons, completing the final act of the greatest individual achievement in British flat racing.

Lester Piggott — not a jockey given to excessive public emotion — allowed himself a visible moment of satisfaction as he returned to the unsaddling enclosure. Vincent O'Brien, watching from the stands, understood that he had trained the best horse in Europe and possibly the best horse he would ever train. Charles Engelhard, whose purchase had made it all possible, watched a colt he had bought for $84,000 complete a journey that elevated him to the pantheon of racing's most celebrated owners.

The crowd's response was not the noise of a big winner being well backed, though most of them had backed Nijinsky. It was the sound of people recognising history in the moment it happened.

Lester Piggott's Part

Piggott's partnership with Nijinsky extended across the 1970 season, but the St Leger was the ride that mattered most. The instruction to win without making the race harder than necessary — given the horse's compromised preparation — required a particular kind of jockeyship. Piggott settled him, delivered him at the right moment, and nursed him home when Meadowville's challenge threatened.

The margin of one length was exactly what was needed: a winning margin, accomplished without unnecessary force. That Piggott could calibrate a Triple Crown-winning ride to that level of precision, on a horse who was not fully himself, speaks to the quality of his riding at its highest level.

It was his seventh win in the St Leger, extending a record that already made him the most successful jockey in the history of the oldest Classic.

O'Brien's Place in History

Vincent O'Brien's achievement in training Nijinsky to win the Triple Crown places him in a specific category — trainers who won all three Classics with the same horse. The list is short: Matthew Dawson (who trained multiple Triple Crown winners in the nineteenth century), John Scott, Sam Darling, Alec Taylor, Fred Darling, and now O'Brien.

O'Brien's management of Nijinsky — the patient two-year-old campaign designed to educate rather than exhaust, the precision of the Classic targeting, the decision to run him in the King George and Irish Derby between the three main Classic targets — was a masterwork of programme management. Every race was chosen for a reason, every run produced the expected result until the season's very end.

Doncaster's St Leger was the culmination of that programme, the final piece placed in position exactly where O'Brien had designed.

Doncaster in the Moment

Town Moor on that September afternoon was briefly the centre of British sport. The Triple Crown completion drew coverage beyond the racing press — national newspapers led with it, the BBC's television coverage of the race was watched by audiences beyond the usual racing public. Doncaster, a northern industrial town with a working racecourse on its doorstep, hosted the most significant flat racing event of the decade.

That is not a small thing for a racecourse. Moments of real national sporting significance are rare and cannot be manufactured. Doncaster's hosting of the 1970 St Leger — and the history that race created — is permanent.

The Last Triple Crown

More than half a century has passed since Nijinsky stood in the winner's enclosure at Doncaster in September 1970. In that time, horses have come close — Reference Point, Oh So Sharp, Nashwan, Sea The Stars, Camelot — but none has won all three Classics. The pattern of modern racing, with its international dimension, its autumn targets in France and America, and its compressed schedules, makes it harder than ever for a trainer to maintain a horse's form across the six months required. And even setting those structural barriers aside, the task demands a horse of a quality that appears perhaps once in a generation.

Nijinsky's generation had one. The record stands.

What Doncaster Holds

Doncaster's St Leger is the race that gives the course its permanent significance in Classic history. Every September, the oldest Classic is run at Town Moor, and every year the race is framed in the context of whether a Triple Crown attempt is possible. Since 1970, none has succeeded. The race exists in the shadow of what happened in September 1970, and that shadow is cast by a horse who spent the most important afternoon of his career here.

The racecourse acknowledges the history. The St Leger Festival each September is one of the most attended race meetings in the British calendar, drawing crowds who understand they are attending a race with a heritage unlike any other in the sport. The fact that a Triple Crown winner last stood in the winner's enclosure here more than fifty years ago does not diminish the occasion — it deepens it.

Nijinsky's Breeding Legacy

The legacy of Nijinsky extends beyond Doncaster and beyond the Triple Crown. At stud in America, he became one of the most influential sires of the twentieth century. His sons include Golden Fleece, who won the 1982 Derby; Shahrastani, who won the 1986 Derby; and Caerleon, who won the 1983 Prix du Jockey Club. His daughters produced champions at the highest level across Europe and America.

The modern Thoroughbred is saturated with Nijinsky blood. His genetic influence, combined with the Northern Dancer bloodline that he carried, has shaped the direction of Thoroughbred breeding for decades. The $84,000 yearling bought on Vincent O'Brien's recommendation became, in every significant sense, the most valuable horse of his generation.

For the Racing Visitor

Standing on Town Moor at Doncaster in September, watching the St Leger field come round the final bend and accelerate towards the winning post, it is possible to see the same view that those 30,000 spectators saw in 1970. The track has been modernised; the grandstands have changed; the crowd wears different clothes. But the flat, wide expanse of Town Moor, the long straight run to the line, and the shape of the race are the same.

Nijinsky's St Leger was run here. The record it established — last Triple Crown of the twentieth century, last as of 2026 in any century — began here. That is Doncaster's permanent contribution to the history of British racing.

See our Doncaster history guide for the full story of the racecourse's four centuries.