LEGENDS OF THE SPORT
An equine comet who blazed from April to October in 1986, Dancing Brave’s halo was tarnished by the Derby he didn’t – and should have – won. Julian Muscat charts the almost invincible colt’s dazzling story
IT doesn’t take long before the great deeds of yesteryear fade away with time’s passage.
Occasionally, however, a moment of magic shines so brightly that it becomes definitive. One such moment was Dancing Brave’s victory in the 1986 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
It all distilled down to that final flourish, that electric surge of acceleration when all seemed lost, and the sheer audacity of Pat Eddery in the saddle.
While Pat was convinced no horse could resist Dancing Brave in full cry, the broader question was whether the three-year-old could reproduce his best towards the end of an arduous season. French turfistes doubted he could peak again at Longchamp in October. Besides, they had their own totem in Bering, a stirring winner of the French Derby, when he’d lowered the track record by more than one second.
Although Bering was good enough to have won nine out of 10 Arcs, victory for Dancing Brave merely endorsed what had become evident as he waltzed his way through a succession of big races. He was an equine comet who blazed from April to October. He barely paused for breath.
Of course, the fact he was so active exposed him more frequently to the vagaries of chance. Sure enough, fortune deserted him when it really mattered, in the Derby at Epsom, when his late charge under Greville Starkey saw him come up half a length short.
That Derby was among the most controversial-ever run. And Greville carried the can, his later life so scarred by the experience that he was embittered when he died of cancer, aged 70, in 2010. The jockey who won just about every big race will forever be held responsible for Dancing Brave’s Derby demise.
At the time Greville was stable jockey to Guy Harwood, a young pioneer who infused science into his art. Guy measured heart rates, analysed sectional times and put muscle fibres under the microscope to determine a horse’s optimum racing distance.
His ascent to the training summit was abetted by the astute eye of bloodstock agent James Delahooke, who came across Dancing Brave at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Summer Yearling Sale in 1984. On behalf of Frankel’s owner/breeder, Prince Khalid Abdullah, James gave $200,000 for the son of Lyphard. In those heady days of the bloodstock boom, it was a relative pittance.
