Sun May 29 2022 - 10:57
Piggott did not win the first of his 11 Flat championships until 1960, but by then the seeds of his celebrity among racegoers and backers had already been sowed. In the 1950s, off-course cash betting was technically illegal but still a hugely popular thread in the fabric of everyday working-class life.
But it was Never Say Die’s unexpected success that made Piggott the anointed heir to Fred Archer, Steve Donoghue and Richards, as the jockey that backers would always seize upon to in search of reward or salvation. His love of money — and the reluctance to part with it which would eventually cost him his liberty, his OBE and any chance of a knighthood — were soon part of the legend too. “Lester,” his former weighing-room colleague Bill Rickaby once said, “relishes every crisp fiver like some rare jewel, for money is his staff of life and he ekes it out as sparingly as a man faced with 50 years of unpensionable retirement”.