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'He was a certainty' - Barry Hills and a famous Lincoln touch

From 10 to 1, our countdown of the greatest gambles of all time. A new instalment will be published every weekday for the next fortnight. Today – No.7: Frankincense and the 1968 Lincoln

The background

Few trainers are revered with the same legendary status as Barry Hills, but back in the late 1960s he was a humble travelling head lad to Newmarket trainer John Oxley desperately seeking the means to get into the business. As the son of a head lad rather than a trainer, that wouldn't be easy.

Hills was on good terms with others in similar positions at Newmarket yards, which was how he came to back Jack Watts's Ovaltine in the 1967 Ebor and Harry Wragg's Lacquer in the Cambridgeshire that year.

Hills and his cohorts had a system in place using seasoned practitioners who placed the bets in small amounts around Britain in order not to raise the alarm in exchange for being able to use the information themselves. And then Hills found the horse on whom to push the system further.

The build-up

Oxley had long had two strong challengers for the Lincoln in 1968, with Frankincense, who had won the 1967 William Hill Gold Cup at Redcar in 1967, set to be joined by Copper's Evidence, who had been sent to Oxley with the express purpose of winning the race. One morning Hills saw the pair do the piece of work that would change his life.

"He worked on Side Hill in Newmarket one day and beat the others out of sight, you didn't need to see any more," he later explained. Hills then did what any right-minded individual equipped with such information would do – and duly began to get as much on as he possibly could.

Using his associates across Britain, Hills backed Frankincense all winter and at all prices.

"Copper's Evidence was a pretty good horse – he eventually finished fifth in the race – but I started backing Frankincense at 66-1. We backed him into 5-1 favourite, though he drifted back on the day. He was a certainty."

When all was said and done Hills, who was just 31 at the time, stood to win £60,000 – which equates to more than £1 million today. He was earning less than £1,000 a year at the time.

The race

Frankincense did drift on the day and was sent off a 100-8 chance under Greville Starkey. Part of the reason for the drift may well have been his welter burden of 9st 5lb; in the previous century only four horses had carried more than 9st to victory in the Lincoln.

But this was an exceptional four-year-old and Frankincense cruised through the race and produced a turn of foot that saw him grab the lead inside the last furlong to win by half a length from Waterloo Place.

"He had the class, the draw didn't matter and he was too good for them," said Hills in the biography of his life aptly titled Frankincense And More. "That was obvious to me. You don't come across chances like that every day. Frankincense had bad feet but he matured and improved. I saw that at an early point. It never crossed my mind that he wouldn't win."

Barry Hills at his home from home in Newmarket during Craven week

Barry Hills: "It never crossed my mind that he wouldn't win"Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

The aftermath

You could argue that no gamble has had as significant an impact on the sport as that of the one that surrounded Frankincense's winning of the 1968 Lincoln. It stands above the rest because it did not just land a big payday – it launched a career. And boy was it some career.

By the time Hills handed over the licence to his son Charlie in 2011, he had left a huge mark on the sport across a 42-year training career. It wasn't just the 3,000 winners, a Classic inventory stretching into double figures and a win in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe but a state-of-the-art facility in Lambourn, careers in racing for all five of his sons (successful jockeys Richard and Michael, trainers John and Charlie, and bloodstock insurer George) and an almost mythical aura for striking the fear of God into bookmakers. That's the impact little more than a minute and a half on Town Moor had.

As for Frankincense, while he did not win again he proved himself to be the proverbial Group horse in a handicap as he finished second in the Queen Anne, fourth in the Eclipse and third in the Sussex Stakes.