Was Spartan Missile, winner of the triple crown of Britain’s hunters’ chases in one season and later second in a Grand National, the greatest hunter chaser?
Yes, if you believe the rating of 13st he was given at the conclusion of the 1979 and 1980 seasons by the annual Hunter Chasers & Point-to-Pointers formbook. At that time it was published by IPC Magazines Ltd and compiled and edited by the astute Iain Mackenzie and David Phillips.
Putting that 13st figure into a contemporary mark (rather than stones, pounds and ounces), the latest Point-to-Point & Hunter Chase Yearbook assigns Spartan Missile a rating of 166, which compares to a mark of 154 for dual Cheltenham Foxhunter Chase winner Earthmover and 148 for the current top-rated hunter Hazel Hill.
In simple terms, if Spartan Missile faced Hazel Hill in a handicap hunters' chase he would be asked to carry 18lb more, a significant weight concession to a horse we know is very good.
In common with many top racehorses the tale of Spartan Missile's life is so much richer than merely horse eats, horse sleeps, horse is trained, wins races, is retired. His life, and that of the Thorne family who bred, owned and trained him, embraces amazing performances, historic achievements and, almost inevitably, tragedy, too.
Foaled in 1974 having been bred by John Thorne at his Warwickshire farm, Spartan Missile was a son of Spartan General out of Polaris Missile. Thorne owned both sire and dam, standing Spartan General at his Chesterton Stud and having ridden Polaris Missile to victory in Cheltenham's four-mile National Hunt Chase in 1966.
John Thorne, a man of vision and sporting spirit
Thorne's son, Nigel, was a talented amateur who had ridden Polaris Missile in the 1968 Grand National but died in a car accident soon after, while his daughters, Jane and Diana, were competent amateurs who rode Spartan Missile in races and competed at the highest level in eventing. Diana, who became the first woman to win a British Jump race under Rules against men – February 7, 1976, when winning a hunters' chase at Stratford on Ben Ruler – was second at Badminton and Burghley on The Kingmaker and long-listed for the British Olympic team. Reflecting on that time in her life, Diana says: "My father had come out of the army and bought the farm with a huge mortgage. He went on to stand four stallions, including Spartan General who he bought from Fred Rimell [a triple-winning Grand National trainer], and he was farming and breeding horses. Jane and I had our eventers as well as the pointers to ride and life at the farm was very busy, and since Stoneleigh was nearby we would go there for eventing clinics with top instructors like Bertie Hill, Harvey Smith and Robert Hall. Yet Daddy still insisted that we should go and do typing and cookery courses. You have to laugh when you look back."
Both sisters married men of international repute in the world of racing, Jane marrying American George Sloan, a champion amateur in Britain and in his homeland, and Diana marrying champion Jump trainer Nicky Henderson. They became parents to three daughters but later divorced.
A big, young horse who liked a good buck
Jane was given the job of breaking Spartan Missile in, and says: "Father always liked him – he was an imposing foal with a lot of bone and very well balanced. He was typical of his sire.
"When he was being broken in he did like bucking, and so we backed him in a stable to give ourselves a bit more control."
Diana recalls: "The first time Jane took Spartan Missile hunting he bucked her off three times at the meet. Daddy later took him down to Devon for stag hunting and they went out five days out of ten, which really helped to educate the horse and get him to think about the job. He later field-mastered on him, and he would do a proper day's hunting.
"He was a hell of a character, but so balanced and such a beautiful mover and with a wonderful mouth. He could have excelled in any discipline. He would take you into a fence and quicken."
Although John was in the saddle for all of Spartan Missile's biggest wins, Jane was given the job on his racing debut as a four-year-old in a novices' hurdle race at Worcester. She says: "I rode the horse when my father couldn't do the weight. It was a huge field of runners, and he was just out for a gallop round, but finished eighth. It was a promising start."
As a five-year-old Spartan Missile's education continued and he was twice pulled up before enormous ability overcame his youth, size and inexperience. He completed the season with a hat-trick of hunters' chase triumphs plus a fall, and the following year he emerged as an outstanding six-year-old when recording five hunters' chase wins and second place in the 1978 Whitbread (now Bet365) Gold Cup at Sandown behind the Tommy Stack-ridden Strombolus.
Jane was in the saddle for that run, but her father, who was 50, held the reins otherwise, recording wins initially at Kempton, and Leicester (where Nicky Henderson rode runner-up Rolls Rambler). Five days after that triumph Spartan Missile turned out again at Sandown and won under 13st, while at Towcester he gave 11lb to former Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Ten Up and beat him four lengths before going to Aintree and victory in the Fox Hunters' Chase. It was gained despite his rider's stirrup leather breaking at the fence before Becher's Brook when the pin in the buckle snapped.
Youtube footage (click here to watch) of that race shows Thorne attempting to regain the stirrup before realising it is broken, overcoming a near unseat three out and riding his horse to victory with both feet dangling below the horse's flanks. The dangling stirrup can be clearly seen after they pull up.
Spartan Missile (John Thorne) soars over The Chair at Aintree
A busy season for a six-year-old
The Whitbread second place was to embellish the season, which otherwise ended on low notes with a fall and unseat when favourite for two hunters' chases at Cheltenham and a second place at Stratford when Spartan Missile attempted to give 17lb to talented Bright Chance who was winning his seventh race of the season. Typical of the time, and in a point-to-point and hunters' chase season that started in mid-February, Spartan Missile, although only six, had run ten times in a little over three months. A field of eight was the smallest he had faced.
Given a rating of 12st by Mackenzie & Phillips, Spartan Missile had already gained the position of top hunter chaser, and he was to emphatically extend that superiority in 1979 when a seven-year-old. "A fantastic performer who is in a different world," said the authors in summing up a season in which Spartan Missile won hunters' chases at Sandown (twice), Warwick, Leicester, the Cheltenham Foxhunter Chase in which he reeled in the front-running and highly-talented Queensberry Lad and toyed with him before cruising away to win by 12 lengths, and then onto Aintree for a second Foxhunters' Chase.
Victory there was followed by his sole defeat of the season when caught by Ten Up (rec.7lb) at Towcester, before winning ways resumed at Haydock, Warwick and twice at Stratford. On the second occasion victory came in the Horse & Hound Cup (now Pertemps Champion Hunters' Chase), meaning that Spartan Missile had become the second horse to sweep up the two Foxhunter Chases and Stratford's feature in one season, the first being Chris Collins's Credit Call seven years earlier. Spartan Missile subsequently went over to France for an attempt on the Grand Steeple-Chase De Paris, where professional jockey Martin Blackshaw rode him into fifth place.
His second Aintree win is also worthy of Youtube viewing, although it proves the Grand National fences were in those days a daunting test for many a hunter and their amateur riders. Fifteen horses lined up, half a dozen runners departed at the first, and when Spartan Missile cruised down to Becher's Brook he had just three rivals. At that fence he sprawled, Thorne was almost dislodged and briefly had both boots on one side of the saddle, yet recovered to beat Crystal Gazer easily by eight lengths. His daughter Jane had unseated from New Arctic with four to jump when lying second, albeit someway behind her trail-blazing father, while Alan Walter, a current point-to-point trainer and well-known Somerset horse transporter, took an acrobatic unseat three out from Mr Gay but remounted for third.
'More than a hunter chaser' said Sir Peter
Sir Peter O'Sullevan's BBC commentary on the run-in reflected that Spartan Missile was "a great hunter chaser – more than a hunter chaser" and that Thorne was letting him hack canter to victory with a possible view to turning out for the National two days later, although that plan was shelved.
The following season, perhaps rusty for his season's debut as an eight-year-old and carrying the familiar weight of 12st 10lb, Spartan Missile missed out on his annual opening-day Sandown win before scoring at Warwick, but a suspensory ligament issue curtailed further action.
Injury was also to halt his season as a nine-year-old, but not before he played a part in one of racing's most famous stories. That came after he had been disqualified for hampering a rival when first past the post in a hunters' chase at Sandown in February, followed by victories at Kempton and Sandown and fourth place in Cheltenham's Gold Cup behind Little Owl (the mount of amateur rider and now point-to-point steward Jim Wilson). However, the race that defines Thorne and his horse was the 1981 Grand National in which they finished second to Aldaniti.
A win would have lifted Thorne's profile to another level, for at 54, and having become a grandfather, he would have been the oldest winner of steeplechasing's most famous race, but victory for Aldaniti and Bob Champion was to generate millions of pounds for cancer research. Champion had almost died of the disease two years earlier and so victory on Aldaniti, a horse who had been written off after breaking down, gave his cancer trust a springboard for decades of valuable fund raising. Spartan Missile was beaten just four lengths, giving the winner 6lb, including 3lb overweight.
Aldaniti (Bob Champion) wins the 1981 Grand National from Spartan Missile (2nd right, John Thorne)
Following that superb effort Spartan Missile ran at Ascot and broke down, which meant he missed the 1982 season when a ten-year-old, and in the March of that year John Thorne died following a fall at Mollington. It was typical of the 55-year-old Thorne's sporting spirit and attitude to life that he would take the ride on a homebred in a maiden point-to-point.
Spartan Missile was moved to Nicky Henderson's Lambourn yard, and, on his first run at the age of 11 and in the name of Thorne's widow Wendy, finished second under Diana in the John and Nigel Thorne Memorial Hunters' Chase at Stratford. He added a conditions chase win at Newbury but unseated professional jockey Hywel Davies in Corbiere's Grand National, while in the following year's National at the age of 12 he finished 16th under amateur John White. That season had shown his brilliance was dimming, yet he won under Jane at Stratford and carried her into third in her father and brother's memorial race, before erstwhile professional White took over for Cheltenham's Foxhunter Chase, in which Spartan Missile's grit and class carried him into second place behind the Oliver Sherwood-ridden Venture To Cognac.
Final season and still competitive
His final season proved to be 1985, when, as a 13-year-old, he triumphed under Diana in Stratford's John and Nigel Thorne Memorial, a race which in hindsight would have been the perfect farewell. Instead, the temptation of another Cheltenham Foxhunter Chase was taken, and while Spartan Missile gave Diana a fine ride and carried her into sixth place behind the Alan Hill-ridden Elmboy he finished lame.
Diana says: "He broke down, and it was so sad. We shouldn't have run on ground that wasn't suitable and I should have pulled him up two out. We got him home and gave him a week, but then asked my uncle, Peter Thorne, who was a vet, to take a look, and he said there was no hope. Spartan Missile was put down and buried at Windsor House Stables [Nicky Henderson's base before he gained Seven Barrows], and I've been going there most years since to visit the grave and clean the headstone."
She adds: "He was a character, and he was staggeringly good at swimming, which we discovered after my father dug a trench on the farm, filled it with water from a brook and Spartan Missile would plough up and down. My father had great vision, and could come up with ideas we take for granted now. When he died and the horse was moved to Windsor House there was an equine pool to swim around and Corky Browne, the head lad, couldn't believe how powerfully he could swim. It was a sign of his incredible heart.
'A staggeringly good swimmer' - Spartan Missile in John Thorne's trench swimming pool
"Nicky enjoyed using him as a hack that he would ride with the string. There was a big field with a wooden rail running down it as a division to make two fields. One day the string was hack cantering around in a circle to warm up, and Nicky was shouting instructions from the back of Spartan Missile, who you could see eyeing up this rail. The next time around he just took hold of the bit and headed straight for it and jumped it cleanly, with Nicky holding on."
Spartan Missile ran in 38 hunters' chases and won 23, invariably carrying big weights by today's standards and conceding pounds to his rivals. The authority of his wins and effortless jumping and galloping when in his prime, as much as his big-race triumphs and valiant efforts in the Gold Cup and Grand National, mark him out as the strongest candidate to be regarded as the greatest hunter chaser.
All-time greats - released each and every Friday! Do you have any recollections or fond memories of any of the 'greats' (Double Silk, Baby Run, Teaplanter and Spartan Missile) featured so far? If so, we would love to hear them (email: [email protected]) and the best may feature on this website in the coming weeks!