TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/974613
you could ask for no better way to clear the head each morning than to stroll the banks of the Dee, or the city walls. You can admire the springtime bloom in an immaculate park, or the elegant villas built to accommodate the region's new industrial wealth during the 19th Century, gazing serenely between great trees onto the river. Or you can be tempted down from the walls, here and there, to browse a bookshop, or take a leisurely coffee, or explore the warren of double-storey timber arcades that comprise possibly the world's oldest shopping mall. Nobody, in their long history, can have been better qualified to attest to the magic of Chester races than Barry Hills. Nobody, come to that, better embodies the Roodee's sense of living, breathing history. For surely no other trainer, given the historic sparseness of its calendar, has saddled as many as 156 winners here; and none has matched his record of four Chester Cups. Though strictly retired, at 80 Hills still makes sure stern standards are met in the daily operation of the Lambourn stable he has passed onto his son, Charles. Immaculate as ever, he remains the ultimate witness to what makes Chester workâboth as horseman, and as bon viveur. It was during his long professional and personal association with the late Robert Sangster, after all, that Chester enjoyed a modern heyday to measure up to anything contrived by their predecessors in centuries past. "I wasn't there when it started," Hills emphasised wryly. "But it is true I have been going there quite a long time." With its constant turns, Chester is a notorious white- knuckle ride for jockeys. A draw near the rail is considered vital even in the Chester Cup, a bull-run of a race in which the field has two and a quarter miles to sort itself out. Nonetheless Hills would always try to set up a bet or two for Sangster, who for a long time lived locally, and his guests. "You obviously did your best, because you knew they'd all be there," Hills recalled. "Robert would always have BARRY HILLS