The remarkable story of a Gold Cup winner who was bought from travellers for the price of a crate of whisky

Former trainer Arthur Barrow celebrates his 80th birthday on Tuesday and enjoyed the best day of his racing career when Master Smudge was awarded the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1980 after Tied Cottage was disqualified. Read all about the horse's fascinating career in this entertaining piece by David Ashforth . . .

This article was first published on March 14, 2021 exclusively for Racing Post+ subscribers. 

Subscribe to Racing Post+ Ultimate now and get 25% off your first six months!  

Henry Radford had a patch over one eye and a liking for scotch. He owned a mare called Lily Pond, who was barely a racehorse, and mated her with Master Stephen, who was better, but not much.

Lily Pond once won a point-to-point, but only once. That was a maiden race at Cattistock, in Dorset, in 1960. She was unplaced in all her other ten point-to-points and amassed a record of 0-26 over hurdles. 

Master Stephen was better, winning twice on the Flat and twice over hurdles in the mid-1960s, but he was only a modest performer and an unlikely stallion.

In 1972, when Lily Pond was 17, their unpromising union produced Master Smudge. He was the only winner Lily Pond ever foaled.

Radford was to be seen at Taunton market and so was John Tarr, a local pig farmer. Tarr thought the ill-bred creature might suit him for hunting so he arranged to buy him. He asked Radford if it would be all right to leave the horse with him for a week but when he went to collect it Radford had sold the horse to some gypsies from a nearby camp for a crate of whisky.

So Tarr went to the gypsy camp where the colt was tied to a fence and surrounded by children. He bought the gypsies’ horse for the price of the crate of whisky, about £50, plus another £25. As his acquisition was an unbroken two-year-old, hunting him was a long way off, so Master Smudge was for sale at the right price. 

Arthur Barrow was a Somerset farmer and livestock transporter who, with his father Ken, trained a few point-to-pointers at Over Stowey, near Bridgwater. He regularly collected pigs from Tarr’s farm. As he arrived one day, a horse came cantering across a field towards him. “He was the ugliest two-year-old you can imagine,” Barrow told me. “If you had ten horses to choose from, he’d be your ninth choice but he moved so nicely, as if floating on air. And it was as if he was watching me.”

When the pigs were loaded and Barrow drove off, the horse cantered lightly along beside the lorry. “It seemed as if he was telling me to buy him.” Barrow tried to get the horse out of his mind, but Master Smudge stayed resolutely in it. 

So Barrow bought the ugly colt and his horse collar for luck, for £312. It was £312 wonderfully well spent for, as Barrow remarked, “looks don’t win races”.

Arthur Barrow, the Somerset farmer and livestock transporter who bought Master Smudge for £312Credit: Gerry and Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

Luck sometimes does and it was lucky that in 1976, when Barrow went to enter Master Smudge for a selling hurdle at Taunton, he discovered that Tarr had not registered the horse with Weatherbys and that Barrow couldn’t enter him until he was registered. “That was lucky,” Barrow said, “because if he’d run, we’d have lost him.”

His owner-trainer kept the name Tarr told him he’d given the colt: Master from the sire, Master Stephen, and Smudge from the white smudge he had on the side of his nose. 

Over the winter of 1976/77, Master Smudge won two hurdle races and had good placed form against some of the best novice hurdlers, including The Dealer. He was entitled to a place in the inevitably competitive field for the Sun Alliance Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. 

The Dealer was favourite and Master Smudge, ridden by amateur Richard Hoare, 33-1. The permit-trained outsider finished in front of The Dealer, beaten only by Irish raider Counsel Cottage. 

Barrow, his wife Pauline and father Ken were elated, and Barrow believed that his £312 purchase would prove better over fences. In 1978, Master Smudge graduated to chasing. It was not a smooth transition although that autumn he won a novice chase at Newton Abbot and the following February he landed a handicap chase at Stratford. Just over two weeks later Barrow, optimistically, sent Master Smudge back to Cheltenham for the Sun Alliance Chase. 

Silver Buck, from Tony Dickinson’s powerful northern yard, had shown himself to be a high-class chaser, a justified favourite likely to be too good for Master Smudge. But Master Smudge was a lucky horse; the weather was bad and the going heavy; perfect for Master Smudge, not for Silver Buck. 

The horse once sold for a crate of whisky was equipped with endless stamina, willingness, head-down determination and a rare ability to relish the rain-softened ground of an era unfamiliar with modern drainage systems. At 16-1, Master Smudge outslogged his rivals.

“He had big feet and loved soft ground,” Barrow said. “He wasn’t the biggest but he never knew when he was beaten; he would gallop until he dropped.”

The following month Master Smudge finished a creditable runner-up to Diamond Edge in the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown.

When the 1979/80 season started Barrow’s champion collected plenty of prize-money and recognition by finishing fifth in the Hennessy Gold Cup, fourth in the Welsh National and runner-up, eight days later, in the Mandarin Chase at Newbury.

Yet he was not considered to have the class to win a Cheltenham Gold Cup and, despite the blessing, for him, of testing conditions, Master Smudge started at 14-1. Three fences from home, with horses pulling up behind him, Richard Hoare’s mount was way adrift. Two fences from home, pretty much the same. As the exciting, front-running Tied Cottage, ridden beautifully by Tommy Carberry, galloped on to an easy eight-length victory, Master Smudge made up an unlikely amount of ground to finish second. His finishing effort would prove even more important than it seemed at the time.

Tied Cottage was found to have traces of the banned substance theobromine in his post-race sample, from contaminated feed, and was automatically disqualified. When Barrow was told, he said, “I can’t believe it. Are you sure it isn’t a hoax?”

Master Smudge and Richard Hoare had a terrific record at the Cheltenham FestivalCredit: Gerry and Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

For Tied Cottage’s connections it was an appallingly cruel outcome. The previous year, Tied Cottage had fallen at the final fence when disputing the lead with Alverton. When the 1980 Gold Cup was run, Tied Cottage’s trainer, Dan Moore, was too ill to be there and Anthony Robinson, the horse’s owner, who had ridden his horse to victory in the 1979 Irish Grand National, was also terminally ill. Moore died in June and Robinson in August having, two months earlier, gone to Warwick races to hand Arthur Barrow the cherished Gold Cup.

“Anthony Robinson was the most lovely man you could ever wish to meet,” Barrow remembers. “He took it on the chin and was genuinely pleased for us. I can’t praise him enough.”

Three weeks later, Barrow invited the whole village of Over Stowey to a party in the village hall. It was a celebration of one of the fairy-tale stories that give heart and soul to the sport of horseracing.

When unromantic analysts cast their eyes over the 1980 Gold Cup, they were less taken with Master Smudge’s performance. John Randall’s cold gaze viewed Master Smudge as “the worst Gold Cup winner in the race’s history”. He had won it due to Tied Cottage’s unfortunate disqualification and “by virtue of having plodded his way past 15-year-old Mac Vidi,” who had finished third. 

Arthur Barrow’s champion may not have had outstanding class but he had other virtues and they gave his owner-trainer, his jockey Richard Hoare and those close to them an unmatched thrill to savour for a lifetime - and a lot of prize-money. 

Master Smudge’s Sun Alliance Chase success was worth £12,832, the Gold Cup another £35,997 (about £155,500 today). In 1981, when ridden by Richard Linley, he won the Mandarin Chase, worth £4,552, and then the Golden Miller Chase at Cheltenham along with £13,403. Then there was all the place money. It was remarkable for a horse once bought for a few bottles of whisky.

Master Smudge was retired at the age of 13 and stayed with Barrow for the rest of his life, sometimes being taken hunting by ‘Bonk’ Walwyn, the wife of trainer Peter Walwyn. One day, when he was 25, Master Smudge lay down in his field and died peacefully.

Eventually, in 2015, Arthur Barrow told his and Master Smudge’s remarkable story in a privately published work, From Traveller’s Camp to Gold.

Read more . . .

Find out where hot Arkle favourite Sir Gino is entered on Saturday - including a potential thriller in open company 

Is a Gold Cup hat-trick for Galopin Des Champs a foregone conclusion? Ante-post views on the main Cheltenham Festival race  

Irish Gold Cup set to stay in Saturday slot at Dublin Racing Festival despite Willie Mullins suggesting a return to Sunday 

Subscribe to Racing Post+ Ultimate and get 25% off your first six months!  

Available to new subscribers purchasing Racing Post+ Ultimate using code ED256 through the Racing Post website. First three payments will be charged at £37.49, subscription renews at full monthly price thereafter. To cancel please contact us at least seven days before subscription is due to renew.