As the big operations once again mop up the prestigious prizes in the European Flat season, some of the most refreshing results of the summer have been achieved by a Yorkshire-based owner- breeder with only four broodmares and not many more horses in training.
Top-level racing can often feel like a private party to which few are invited. Yet the exploits of the Ralph Beckett-trained pair Pride Of Arras and Amiloc have ensured that Vimy Aykroyd has been
rubbing shoulders with the juggernauts of the Turf, with wins in the Dante Stakes at York and the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot.
It is quite an achievement, especially the heights achieved by Amiloc, who was gelded while he was being broken in after his owner was informed that she had bred a laid-back racehorse who
was likely to make his first appearance on the track in a National Hunt Flat race!
‘‘It has been incredible, rewarding and quite fun for racing,”
It has meant that 80-year-old Vimy – the nickname has stuck since being used to distinguish between her and a classmate at her first school who was also called Lavinia – has had to swat away big-money offers for both her Group 2 winners.
‘‘It has been incredible, rewarding and quite fun for racing,’’ says Aykroyd.
‘‘The likes of Juddmonte, Wathnan and Godolphin are such big operations. It is quite nice when a little person comes along. We need more of them!
‘‘I have had offers made for both Amiloc (left) and Pride Of Arras but my family says, ‘You are old, why not have fun? Why watch other people having fun?’
‘‘I would be very pleased if they did well for the people who bought them but what would I do if they paid me all the money offered – buy some useless horses? I might as well keep them.’’
Aykroyd is speaking on a sunbleached morning at Copgrove Stud, the 400-acre farm near Harrogate managed by Brian O’Rourke which was once owned by Major Lionel Holliday, breeder of Vaguely Noble and Hethersett. It is now run by a trust set up to maintain the legacy of another giant of the Yorkshire racing scene, Guy Reed.
Only a 15-minute drive from Aykroyd’s home near Boroughbridge, the location means she can keep a close eye on her mares and foals.
However, she credits her success to O’Rourke and her racing advisor, BBA Ireland’s Patrick Cooper, nephew of her husband David and the man who sourced Pride Of Arras’s granddam, Kitty O’Shea, from Coolmore.
‘‘The horses all used to be at the Cliff Stud at Helmsley,’’ Aykroyd relates. ‘‘That was when Henry Cecil used to lease it. We then heard through David Minton, who used to value horses for Guy Reed, that they wanted to take in boarders here, so we moved them.
‘‘If a foal appears, I come shooting up and I bring friends. Patrick comes over [from Ireland] two or three times a year.’’
Aykroyd may hand the credit for her racing success to others, but don’t be fooled into thinking that she is a racing novice.
She was among the first female jockeys to ride in Britain when the Jockey Club sanctioned a series of Flat races in the early 1970s and has also acted as a steward at a clutch of Yorkshire tracks including Pontefract, Ripon, Redcar and Thirsk.
Aykroyd, who has lived a life which would not look out of place in the pages of a novel, including her three marriages, also belongs to a family steeped in racing history.
Her paternal grandfather Harry Beasley rode and trained the 1891 Grand National winner Come Away. He was 72 when he rode his last winner on the original Pride Of Arras – a mare as opposed to Aykroyd’s winner of the Dante – and 83 when he rode in his last race.
Aykroyd’s cousin, Bobby Beasley, won the 1961 Grand National on Nicolaus Silver while her father Pat carved a notable career on the Flat.
Born in Ireland, Pat, nicknamed Rufus because of the colour of his hair, developed a love of Yorkshire while at school at Ampleforth College. He would go on to train at Wold House stables in Malton.
He had moved to England to ride for 1930 champion trainer Atty Persse, who would become Vimy’s godfather, before going on to be retained by Jack Joel, the British-South African gold mining
magnate and champion breeder, as well as Newmarket trainer Bob Colling.
But the most successful period of his career came as stable jockey to five-time champion trainer Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort when wins included the 1936 St Leger and 1937 Eclipse Stakes on Boswell.
As a trainer, one of Beasley’s best horses was Bounteous, victorious in the 1960 Dewhurst Stakes and runner-up in the 1961 St Leger. Before the colt contested the Derby – he finished unplaced behind Psidium – Pat hired a brass band to play next to the Malton gallops to prepare his colt for the cacophony of noise at Epsom.
Beasley married Lady Alexandra Egerton, daughter of the sixth Earl of Wilton. Vimy was their only child.
The reason that Aykroyd became one of Ralph Beckett’s first owners when he set up as a trainer in 1999 is down to the strangest twist.
As an infant, Aykroyd was handed over to the Grimthorpe family and brought up alongside William, Ralph’s father.
Aykroyd recalls: ‘‘At the time it was traumatic. I never actually got on with my mother after that, which wasn’t really surprising.
I was expelled from one of the convents for swearing at the nuns
‘‘The Grimthorpes were friends of my parents. I was three and at that age if you get put somewhere you didn’t have any choice. I had to stay with William – playing with him and sharing the nanny – until he went to his prep school.
‘‘Nanny didn’t like me. She loved William. It wasn’t a great time of one’s life. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
‘‘My childhood wasn’t great. Being an only child, you have to get on with life or otherwise you collapse in a heap. I have always been independent. I was moved on and then my parents split up.
‘‘I then went to a series of convents, one of which I was expelled from for swearing at the nuns because I didn’t like it.
‘‘When I was that young, I probably thought I could go and live with my father, staying in Yorkshire and helping with the horses. But my mother sent me to another convent. I hated school. I learnt nothing and achieved nothing.’’
A brief stint at a finishing school in Paris was aborted when Aykroyd became ill and she ended up at secretarial college in London.
Aykroyd says: ‘‘That was another of my mother’s decisions but probably anything she decided I would have rebelled against.’’
It was a qualification that indirectly led Aykroyd to her first marriage in 1965 to Anglo-Indian Band leader Confrey Phillips. He played for royalty and showbusiness icons such as actress Ava Gardner, who demanded his band take the top slot at Les Ambassadeurs club in London after enjoying his music one evening.
Aykroyd states: ‘‘I met him at a party, like you did in those days. He wanted a secretary so I said, ‘Okay, I will do it’ and he became my first husband. I have one daughter from the marriage, a smashing girl called Emma who has three children and lives in Sussex.
‘‘The marriage didn’t last very long and that is when I came back north and did my race riding.’’
It was 1972 and the Jockey Club had introduced a 12-race series for lady amateur jockeys. Aykroyd won two races on a horse called Old Cock, the first at Doncaster and the second at Haydock the following year.
‘‘I rode out from the age of 15,’’ Aykroyd recalls. ‘‘I wasn’t allowed before that. My father didn’t really approve when lady jockeys came in and he wasn’t happy with me riding in races until he saw it was all safe.
‘‘Women were meant to be feminine, not riding horses in races! I just rode out in a scarf. You didn’t have back protectors and crash helmets.
‘‘My father was meant to train Old Cock, but he didn’t have room. Old Cock had been sent to Anthony Gillam to be trained for hurdling.
‘‘The owners wanted him back for the Flat so we persuaded them to send him to Jimmy FitzGerald so that he could be a dual-purpose horse. I used to ride out for my father and Jimmy.
‘‘I rode against people like Meriel Tufnell and Brooke Sanders – she was much the best of us all. We were treated respectfully but it was a novelty, and we were given extraordinary things.
‘‘I remember the first race I won on Old Cock was backed by Burberry. The first three were all given Mackintoshes, which were huge. None of us could wear them, they were too big! But it was great fun. Now you have all the professional girls which is good.
Aykroyd has also recycled the name of her winning mount, the new version in training with Ed Bethell. The son of Calyx, who was bought for 32,000gns at Tattersalls’ Book 2 Sale in 2022, has won four of his nine races including a mile handicap at York’s Dante meeting in May.
Aykroyd says: ‘‘I was lucky to ride and win on Old Cock. That is why I wanted the name back. Everyone said I would never get it because of the world we live in today – it would not be politically correct. I was amazed when I got it and we have been having a bit of fun with the current Old Cock.’’
Vimy’s riding career was brief and ended when her father retired and she married second husband, Richard Aykroyd.
She says: ‘‘Richard was more of a hunting man. He had the odd point-to-pointer and rode in them.
‘‘We went to live in Spain. We lived in the hills and Gibraltar was our nearest airport. My children went to school in the International School in Sotogrande. We just opted out of life in England.
‘‘Richard was doing a bit of property business, but we were a bit like The Good Life. We were self-sufficient. I was out of racing for 20 years but still followed it.
‘‘We had a little farm with chickens, horses and pigs. It was fun. We were there for about 20 years and then Richard got ill so we had to keep coming back to England. “When he died in 1997, I came back for good because I did not want to stay down there, and the girls had grown up.
‘‘I lived in London for a bit and then came back to Yorkshire and I started stewarding.’’
Vimy would marry Richard’s brother, David, a man with a passion for racing. He was a partner with Robert Sangster in the early days of the Ballydoyle story and, in the early 1980s, would accompany Cooper’s father Tom to inspect yearlings in America for Vincent O’Brien.
Sadly, David has not been able to fully share in the joy of his wife’s success this season. Struck down by dementia, he is now resident in a Ripon care home.
It is exciting because there are plans to travel the horses
Aykroyd says: ‘‘My other daughters Serena and Clare live in Yorkshire and Cornwall. Serena has got very keen on racing and came to Ireland with me. Her son is quite keen as is Clare’s son.
‘‘In the past they probably thought, ‘I don’t know what she is doing this for’. Now they are interested and getting quite excited, which is nice.’’
There promises to be more to interest them in the future. Aykroyd adds: ‘’It is exciting because there are plans to travel the horses. Ralph has been talking about something at the Breeders’ Cup and then Patrick is talking about Japan. We can be ambitious – and the prizemoney out there is amazing.’’
Gelded Pride of Arras has Voltigeur option
Vimy Aykroyd’s breeding operation is firmly concentrated on producing middle-distance horses.
She says: ‘‘I must admit I am not really interested in sprinters. It may be the way I have been brought up.
‘‘My father always trained homebreds for people whose ambitions were to have horses running in the Classic and those longer distance races.’’
Amiloc, who is unbeaten in five runs, missed the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot at the end of last month as Beckett decided to give him more time to get over his royal meeting exertions.
The Irish St Leger at the Curragh on September 14 or the Great Voltigeur Stakes at York’s Ebor fixture later this month are possible next races for him. The Voltigeur is also possible for Pride Of Arras, who has been gelded following his two disappointing runs since winning the Dante at York in May.
The track at Epsom was blamed when Pride Of Arras ran poorly in the Derby, but that could not be offered as an excuse when he was last in the Irish Derby.
Aykroyd says: ‘‘It went a bit pear-shaped when Pride Of Arras ran badly in the Derby and was even worse in the Irish Derby. Rossa Ryan said he didn’t go a yard, so we have now gelded him.
‘‘There was no point not to. He is not going to make a stallion because he has blotted his copybook twice.
‘’It gives you more options. He is back cantering again now and there is a thought we might go for the Great Voltigeur.’’
Aykroyd has four mares at Copgrove Stud and plenty to be optimistic about.
Parnell’s Dream, dam of Pride Of Arras, has his two-year-old full-sister and is in foal to his sire New Bay again.
Colima, dam of Amiloc, has a yearling colt and colt foal by Territories while Chamade, a Sepoy half-sister to Amiloc, has a yearling colt by Mehmas and is in foal to Too Darn Hot.
Aykroyd’s fourth mare, Golden Myrrh, a daughter of Frankel who won two races before
