Marcus Armytage's Racing Diary: racing is not exactly overrun with holy men but Richard...

[ASFN Admin]

It will be a case no “More tea, Vicar?” in the seven horsey parishes of the Evenlode Vale Benefice when Richard Rendall, the outgoing rector, departs the north Cotswolds for pastures new in the middle of January. Rendall, 66, who arrived in 2004, is retiring and moving about as far away as possible, to Durham, where he hopes to keep his eye in with a bit of locum work. (Memo to Middleham and Malton when your vicars are otherwise indisposed). It is probably fair to say that while the odd priest turns up from Ireland in his dog collar at the Cheltenham Festival, racing is not exactly overrun with holy men. But Rendall, whose son Joe works in the British Horseracing Authority’s PR department but has been headhunted by the Jockey Club to lead communications for its eastern region from next month, has one racing claim to fame that few others can boast: he worked for royal trainer Peter Cazalet and rode out Game Spirit in his “gap” between Tonbridge and Oxford. When the teenage Rendall turned up with longish hair at Fairlawne, the old-school Cazalet took one look at him and told him he looked like a fifth-rate musician. He had it cut and asked the trainer the following day if he now looked more like a first-rate musician, a clearly insubordinate question that very evidently did not strike the trainer on the funny bone. His first visit to Cheltenham was in 1969 and the first horse he saw was The Dikler, named after a stream in his parish, dragging his lad round the paddock and subsequently running away to the start with Willie Robinson. The Dikler, who would return to win the 1973 Gold Cup, was ridden in point-to-point by Brian Fanshawe, who was married to David Nicholson’s sister-in-law. Rendall had met the “Duke” on his visits to ride out at Cazalet’s and would end up conducting both his funeral and his memorial. Among others, he rode out Inch Arran, a Topham-winning hard-pulling chaser also belonging to the Queen Mother. When he recounted being run away with by the great horse, at Nicholson’s funeral, as a parable about death not being strong enough to hold Christ, he was unsure whether Princess Anne was impressed or distressed that the vicar delivering the sermon had been allowed anywhere near her grandmother’s horse. His “flock” has included many of racing’s great and good, although the writer Alastair Down comes in under the heading “stray sheep” for living opposite the church in Bledington but seldom crossing its threshold. He has also hunted across the benefice with the Heythrop, and once followed a “scruffy fellow who went like the clappers across country on a skinny white horse”. It turned out to be Charlie Brooks, also of this parish. Having worked as a lawyer and in the City, Rendall was ordained in 1992 after a “conversion experience” in 1976, but, a frequent user of anecdotes from his time in racing in his ministry, he reckons it was God’s plan all along. Occasionally he has ridden out for unroyal trainer Richard Phillips. Although a bit on the big side, when he had a horse large enough to carry him, Phillips, who has a critical eye, reckoned Rendall had the best hands of anyone who had ever ridden out for him, a result of riding hard-pulling horses for Cazalet, and nicknamed him “Hands of God”. From my point of view, he has also kept a watchful eye on my great-grandmother and grandmother (I hope) and a host of racing luminaries in the woodland graveyard of St Nicholas Church, Oddington. Good luck in Durham. * * * * It is not just a French-English dictionary one needs at the races. At Ascot on Saturday, we were treated to a bit of colloquial west country when Dashel Drasher won the Graduation Chase for trainer Jeremy Scott and jockey Matt Griffiths, two natives of Exmoor. A dashel is the name Devonians give to a thistle, while anyone who has ever had a “drashing”, perhaps outside a Torquay nightclub, will know they have been beaten up. A drasher in this case is essentially a hook or a scythe. The chaser was bred by Scott’s wife Camilla and the owners also have the full-sister Drash On Ruby.

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