ENGLISH TEXTS
ITY TO KEEP VERY GOOD HORSES GOING OVER TIME”
BY KATHERINE FORD
Q. What are your memories of Freddy Head as a jockey?
Pierre-Yves Bureau. Honestly, my memory of his riding career is made more of images and readings than direct recollections— I was still young during the great years of the 1970s with his stars such as Val de l’ Orne, Lyphard, Dancing Maid, Ivanjica … Freddy was not the retained jockey for the Wertheimer stable; in fact, we never had one before Olivier Peslier. He rode very good horses for us, but I mainly have direct memories of the second part of his career as a jockey, and his victories for other owners, for example with Miesque, or later with Pas de Réponse. Having such a career as a jockey necessarily comes with a great ability to analyse and adapt in races. That was his strength.
Q. What were his qualities as a trainer?
P-Y. B. He became a trainer for the Wertheimer in the early years when he set up. Northerntown was among the first horses he received, in 1998. It was a very complicated horse, which is why he ended up over jumps. Freddy still managed to win at Group level with him on the Flat. When you are a jockey and become a trainer, I think you come in with quite a lot of ideas. But Freddy knew how to adapt. What struck me was his ability to keep very good horses going over time. He was quite a demanding trainer, and the horses that were able to adapt to his training had exceptional careers. For the Wertheimer colours, this mainly concerned two horses, Solow and Goldikova, but also all those he kept going for other owners, such as Marchand d’ Or or Moonlight Cloud. I have always admired that longevity.
Q. Tell us about Goldikova’ s career and that ambition to enter Breeders’ Cup history.
P-Y. B. The Breeders’ Cup has always been a race that the stable greatly appreciated. And Goldikova was really the kind of filly that adapted very well to those American tracks. She ran in four Breeders’ Cups and won three of them. She is still the only horse to have won three editions of the same race at the Breeders’ Cup. It was the kind of challenge that Freddy and the Wertheimer liked, and the decisions were collective, but always with that tacit agreement that at the slightest negative sign, we would stop immediately. Goldikova won 14 Group 1 races in total; she was a rock. She was not easy in her box, she had a strong personality to mark her territory, but she was very generous, and Freddy knew how to bring her to her very best for the big occasions.
Q. And Solow?
P-Y. B. This is the most striking anecdote I have with Freddy. We could have missed out on Solow. At the beginning, Freddy thought he was a good horse, but Solow took time to confirm. We even ran him in the Vicomtesse Vigier after he had won his first two comeback races at four. Then one day he worked with Anodin, who was preparing for the Prix Jacques Le Marois. That’ s when Freddy realised that Solow had much more speed than we had thought. Freddy had known his dam’ s family when he was a jockey, and we had oriented his career towards longer distances because his dam had been placed in the Prix du Cadran. We had got the distance wrong. Solow won at Clairefontaine over 1,800 metres a few days before Anodin finished second to Kingman in the Jacques Le Marois. After that, he went on to win eleven races in a row, including five Group 1s around the world in the same year. It was extraordinary.
Q. What memory do you keep of Freddy, particularly in the way he communicated with you and his jockeys?
P-Y. B. It was a different era for communication, but we spoke a lot. When it came to top champions, he tended to be very confident. You could see it in his training approach— he knew very well when his horses were at their peak. After big victories, there was a general sense of joy, but
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