After Playlord and Titus Oates had provided the best possible advertisement for their trainer’s ability Lucius maintained

After Playlord and Titus Oates had provided the best possible advertisement for their trainer’s ability, Lucius maintained the momentum by winning a thrilling race for the Grand National in the hands of the jockey Bob Davies. He persuaded the Newcastle multi- millionaire builder Philip Cussins to pay a then record price, pounds 14,750, for Titus Oates, previously in the stables of another great north country practitioner, the late Arthur Stephenson.Titus Oates proved a big success, winning the 1969 Massey Ferguson Gold Cup at Cheltenham, the King George VI Chase at Kempton and the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown. He also finished third behind What a Myth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.In 1968 Richards moved west from Northumberland to train in the beautiful Cumbria Fells at Grey-stoke Castle by the Lake District. As the horse progressed Richards, never one to lack confidence, was of the firm belief that he would make it to the top of the tree as a trainer. Playlord lived up to his trainer’s aspirations by winning Doncaster’s Great Yorkshire Chase, at the time one of the most important races in the calendar, and the 1969 Scottish National. He became too heavy for the flat and switched to the jumping yard of Ivor Anthony and in the Fifties moved north to join Johnny Marshall’s stable at Chatton in Northumberland.

Richards’s riding career was brought to a premature end by a fall in which he broke his back at Perth at the age of 29. For the next five years he looked after hunters and ran a riding school, before turning his hand to training jumpers with great success, winning most of the big races in the calendar.He embarked on his new career at Beadnell on the Northumberland coast and Playlord and Titus Oates, two of the outstanding chasers of their generation, alerted the racing world to the fact that another Gordon Richards was quickly making a name for himself.Playlord was Richards’s first winner in a novice hurdle at the now defunct Bogside racecourse in Scotland in 1965. Nothing gave him more satisfaction than having his professional judgement vindicated. One of the last times he went racing he witnessed the tragic death of One Man, who fell and broke a leg at Aintree the day before this year’s Grand National.Gordon Richards left home near Bath as an 11-year-old to work for the eccentric Mrs Louie Dingwall, who combined training horses on the south coast with selling petrol and second-hand cars He was later apprenticed to the Didcot-based J.C Waugh. Richards’s brave fight against cancer prevented him from being at Cheltenham for One Man’s emotional victory, which was probably the triumph he cherished most of all.One Man had been written off as a horse that hated the undulations of Cheltenham and for Richards to have defied his critics meant a lot to him. He owned property and land in the locality, where he handled a string of some 70 jumpers.Richards’s fortunes rode on the backs of some outstanding steeplechasers, beginning with Playlord and Titus Oates and continuing with the 1978 Grand National winner Lucius, followed six years later with another momentous Aintree victory via Hallo Dandy. His most recent stable star was the enigmatic grey One Man, winner of two King George VI Chases and last March hero of the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.

On another occasion Richards was mistakenly sent Sir Gordon’s account by Weatherbys, racing’s secretariat, and he used to tell the tale with a smile saying: “I have never been so well off!”Of course he was well off in his own right after many successful seasons as a trainer in the Cumbria village of Greystoke near Penrith. Born in Bath, the eldest of 10 children of a timber merchant, he was named after the legendary jockey Sir Gordon Richards, who was no relation. He had a “W” inserted as a middle initial on the insistence of a fastidious clerk of the scales in order to avoid confusion with his namesake when he started riding as an apprentice on the flat at Salisbury in 1944 At the time Richards was attached to the stables of J.C. Waugh and the “W” stood for Waugh.
Even so there were times when the two names were confused by both punters and racing’s officialdom. Sir Gordon was once stopped by a well-wisher while holidaying in Barbados and congratulated on all the winners he had been training during the winter. GORDON RICHARDS will be remembered for his name as well as for the feat of training two winners of the Grand National in a magnificent career which spanned 34 years of National Hunt racing. Gates was barred from another term as police chief, and Bradley decided not to run in the 1993 mayoral election.

Instead he returned to legal practice and an uncharacteristically quiet life. “I had enough exposure in 20 years to last a lifetime,” he commented in 1994. “If my name was never printed again, it wouldn’t bother me.”Thomas Bradley, police officer and politician: born Calvert, Texas 29 December 1917; member, Los Angeles City Council 1963-73; Mayor of Los Angeles 1973-93; married 1941 Ethel Arnold (two daughters); died Los Angeles 29 September 1998.. In particular, a strong personal rivalry emerged between Bradley and the long-serving LAPD chief Daryl Gates, a rivalry that exploded into open animosity during the tense days of April 1992.After the Rodney King beating, Bradley openly called for Gates’s resignation. After the acquittal of the four police officers in the case, Bradley became so emotional about what he called an unmistakable crime that he was later accused of inciting the riots himself.As it turned out, both Bradley and Gates were undone by the unrest.

Blacks and minority groups gained admittance to city hall jobs and public contracts for the first time. And a long battle began to gain some civilian control over the LAPD. The real issue, though, was the blatant racial injustice at large in Los Angeles, which Yorty sought to defend and Bradley to attack. Yorty beat him for the mayor’s seat in 1969, but was roundly beaten when they faced each other off again four years later.The Bradley machine soon took effect. Clearly, the city was crying out for more conciliatory leadership and he was the obvious man to provide it. As late as the mid-1960s blacks could not buy property in white neighbourhoods without a white intermediary and were frequently refused service in shops and restaurants.It was the Watts riot that gave Bradley his chance.