Racing fans love a course and distance winner, and those that do it on multiple occasions acquire cult status in their niche following. Bradbury Star was one such at Cheltenham, winning 9 times, including at the highest level, but there are heartwarming stories among our smaller, less reported courses. Let’s relay the story of Fakenham’s winning-most thoroughbred, Cool Roxy.
The winner of 12 of his 77 starts over a ten year career, no less than 11 of those victories took place around the tight rectangle of Norfolk’s only jump racecourse. Under the diligent guidance of Hertfordshire permit holder Alan Blackmore, the bay gelding stayed sound throughout, and found himself a niche at Fakenham.
The story, though, begins under the beady eye of another of racing’s iconic names: Mercy Rimell. Husband Fred was a rock around which the sport was built during the ‘60s and ‘70s, with a clutch of top flight winners trained from Kinnersley and a string of charismatic riders like Terry Biddlecombe and Sam Morshead. If you travel north on the M5, the folly at Kinnersley, focus of so many atmospheric photographic images of the Rimell string at exercise, can be seen shortly before junction 7.
After standing down from training in 1989, Mercy continued to breed thoroughbreds. It may not have been her deliberate intention to breed a Fakenham specialist; most breeders set their sights on Cheltenham or Aintree winners, but Cool Roxy’s effort is no less remarkable.
An inauspicious start as near back marker in bumpers at Sandown and Huntingdon in the autumn of 2001 appeared to give no indication of the delights to come. Indeed, success at Fakenham was hardly immediate; on his opening bow the following March, over the smaller obstacles, our hero chased the leaders, and was spent by the last where he tipped up and fell, depositing regular rider Chris Honour in the spring turf.
It took a further seven races for Cool Roxy to get his head in front, starting his second season as a novice, following a sequence of reasonable efforts around our smaller tracks that foretold that there was a race in the bay gelding somewhere. Taking a bold approach, Honour sent the gelding out in front on that fateful day in November 2002 for the catchily titled Dareham & Fakenham McMillan Cancer Relief Novices Handicap Hurdle, was headed two out but fought back to win the hard way, by 1/2l.
The legend was underway.
Two near misses in more exalted company back at Fakenham a month later and at Newbury in February prefaced a winning return at Fakenham in pursuit of a second career win. No disparagement of the Newbury effort, 6l behind King Harald, some years later to become Mark Bradstock’s first Cheltenham Festival winner.
Back at Fakenham for a handicap hurdle in March, his course record of F412 alerted followers to a possible penchant for the track. At any rate, he surely knew his way around. Setting off in front, he had to surrender the lead, but rallied to lead on the flat and win by a length.
After a summer’s break, Cool Roxy headed up an autumn campaign for the 2003/4 season with an inauspicious last place at Huntingdon in October. Dropping down in class, Alan Blackmore returned him to Fakenham three weeks later off a similar rating, for a 2 1/2l victory, and again the following February by 4l, both under Chris Honour.
By March, when he travelled up the A1065 once again, the handicapper had put our hero up 14 lbs, and he was appearing toward the top of the handicap. However, knowing your way round is a distinct advantage, illustrated by a 6l margin at the post, occasioned by some not completely faultless jumping.
A yearning for more variety, or perhaps a loathing of the long road to Fakenham, meant Cool Roxy didn’t reappear in Norfolk for a further 18 races until May 2006, a full 26 months. But that interlude illustrated one thing at least, that Cool Roxy could win elsewhere. Round the figure of eight course that is Fontwell, Cool Roxy and Chris Honour notched their most valuable prize to date, a £10,000 hurdle under a rating of 121, a further rise of 11lbs.
A new tack was required, and as Spring turned to summer, Blackmore sent Cool Roxy chasing, with a debut win at Fakenham in a beginners’ chase in May 2006. That season, he returned four times to Fakenham, winning his novice and then a handicap in the Spring. The Fakenham record at this juncture read F-4121-11/12141. He’d been around sufficiently long for Chris Honour to reduce his claim to 3lbs.
Starting the autumn of 2007, the Blackmores sent our hero to Huntingdon, where he nearly ruined the story, going down by a short head. The effort clearly didn’t take too much out of him, as 3 weeks later, he was back at his favourite track to win with a pillar to post ride in a 0-125 chase, idling in front, to win by 1 1/4l.
In December he crossed swords once again with King Harald, grappling to find a winning thread 18 months after his Cheltenham triumph, and went down fighting, losing out by a length in the Norfolk gloom. It looked as if the handicapper might have his measure after a third in February, courageously battling to lose out by 7l, when some sketchy jumping didn’t help his cause, and in May, when comprehensively outpointed by a Bowen – trained winner.
How appropriate then that his debut start in the 2008-9 season should be not only back at Fakenham, but in a race named after his trainer’s birthday. It was a victory parade for the then 9 time Fakenham victor, the margin 24l, his widest ever.
Second to a Lucy Wadham horse in December that year, herself no slouch at her local course, he reverted to winning ways 2 months on despite being outjumped by a rival, with Turfform remarking he’d “shown great courage”. This was the stuff of heroes.
Cool Roxy’s career had seen no shortage of jumping errors, but a sense of self-preservation had kept our hero off the floor since that debut attempt over hurdles. At the outset of his 10th season, he deposited the unsurprisingly loyal Chris Honour on the deck with a series of blunders around a set of obstacles he should have been able to jump blindfold. Perhaps it was the standard of the race that set him back, now running off a rating of 132. Let’s be charitable.
He visited the winner’s enclosure no less than four times that season, filling the placings without troubling the judge too much. Winning distances in the double figures indicated a career on the wane, where his handicap mark had finally caught up with him. At the conclusion of the 2009-10 season, he was retired from Rules racing, after a third place finish at his appointed track, and dropped a rank into the Point-to-Point field, under Emily Crossman, who had ridden him at exercise at Blackmore’s.
Although running with distinction around the rural venues of East Anglia, he was tapped for toe each time. A final throw of the dice at Fakenham was prepped up in a hunters chase in May, but at the age of 14, even the appeal of his favourite track wasn’t sufficient.
There was one final visit to Fakenham in 2015 to open a bar named after the folk hero of the racecourse. Looking a picture, he clearly rather enjoyed the adulation. Sadly, a long retirement was not to be however; a short dose of colic two years later meant a premature end to a charismatic horse that had never been lame, and given pleasure to thousands watching live at Fakenham and through pictures.
They say that National Hunt fans enjoy the sport all the more for seeing their favourites year after year. Cool Roxy was the apogee of this adage, perhaps the only horse of his standard to have his own autobiography, published in 2024 and written by Aaron Gransby.
Alan Blackmore trained 29 winners in total under Rules, 14 of them at Fakenham. His 66% win & place record at Fakenham stands tall against any of his professional contemporaries, but more importantly, the likes of Cool Roxy gave the utmost pleasure – the epitome of our sport.
