TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1021151
And Tesio too. When he was away from the stable, he was completely different. He was a very accessible person: he liked to tell you stories, to make you laugh, to make you marvel. "Remember he knew about much else besides horses. He designed furniture, he painted. And he had travelled far and wide, Patagonia, China, everywhere. He had such imagination. While he and my fa- ther were very different characters, both were painters. Tesio painted many of his horses, my father was more into character portraits." The Marchese remembers the death of Ribot's work-rider on the gallops here, sometimes cited to suggest the kind of ferocity in the champion—then a 2-year- old—that would later be alleged when his scheduled return to Europe, from stud in Kentucky, was cancelled as too perilous. "The horse wasn't dangerous," the Marchese emphasises. "The stable boy who fell and died, we thought maybe he had a heart attack or something. I didn't see it happen, but I remember it well. Ri- bot's trainer [Ugo Penco] had great belief in the horse and must take a lot of credit for what he achieved. "With horses, Tesio could always see the future. The only problem was that the dam had produced three or four bad charac- ters. That's why Ribot wasn't entered for the Italian Derby. In those days, you en- tered when the mare was in foal! Now you