Showing posts with label Horse Racing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Horse Racing. Show all posts

3 October 2022

Francesco Bianchini - jockey

19th century rider who contested Palio di Siena 55 times

The Palio di Siena has been taking place in the Tuscan city of Siena since the early part of the 17th century
The Palio di Siena has been taking place in the Tuscan
city of Siena since the early part of the 17th century
The jockey Francesco Bianchini, who holds the record for the most consecutive participations in the historic Palio di Siena horse race, was born on this day in 1808 in Siena.

Bianchini, who raced under the name of Campanino, rode in 44 editions of the famous event, in which horses and riders represent 10 of the city of Siena’s 17 contrade or districts, without missing one between his debut in 1827 and the second running of the twice-yearly race in 1847.

He rode in 55 editions in total before he retired for good in 1860, at the age of 51, chalking up a total of nine wins. In his career, he rode for all bar two of the 17 contrade.

Held in July and again in August every summer in the Mediaeval square at the centre of Siena, the Piazza del Campo, with occasionally an extra race to commemorate a special event or anniversary, the Palio can be a brutal affair.

The colours of the contrade, the 17 districts who contest the Palio, are displayed around the square
The colours of the contrade, the 17 districts who
contest the Palio, are displayed around the square
The 10 participants in the bareback contest race each other on a temporary dirt track around the perimeter of the shell-shaped piazza. The race consists of three laps, which the horses cover at such a furious pace that the whole thing is over in about 90 seconds.

It is not uncommon for jockeys to fall off their mounts and for horses to cross the finishing line riderless. In fact, a riderless horse can still be declared the winner so long as the colours of their contrada are still attached to their bridle.

Bianchini, whose nickname Campanino came from the tiny golden bell he wore as an earring, won the Palio for the first time at the age of 19 in 1828 at his fourth attempt, riding for the contrada known as Leocorno (Unicorn).

He won both editions in 1830, first for the Civetta (Little Owl) contrada and then for Istrice (Crested Porcupine). He had more success in 1835 for Pantera (Panther) and in 1837 for Aquila (Eagle).

At his peak, he won the Palio three times in a row, in August 1840 for Civetta, July 1841 for Oca (Goose) and August 1841 for Lupa (She-Wolf).

Huge crowds pack into the Piazza del Campo to witness the race and the pageant that precedes it
Huge crowds pack into the Piazza del Campo to
witness the race and the pageant that precedes it
His final success came in 1843 for the Tartuca (Tortoise) contrada.

Away from the race, Bianchini was a volatile individual with a violent streak who was often in trouble. At the age of 11, he was put on trial for the murder of another boy but was acquitted, despite several witnesses testifying against him.

Throughout his time as a Palio rider, his rivalry with another fantino - jockey - Francesco Santini, known as gobbo saragiolo - the Saragiolo hunchback, after his home village - was not confined to the race.

After taking part in a race at the nearby town of Castelnuovo Berardenga, Bianchini started a brawl with a groomsman which resulted in the groomsman, who worked for the contrada represented by Santini, suffering fatal injuries after Bianchini threw him into a ditch and repeatedly kicked and punched him.

The court ruled that the groomsman’s death was caused by the injuries he suffered falling into the ditch rather than by any blows inflicted by Bianchini, who remarkably was sentenced to only three months in jail.

Although he had to pay a large sum in compensation to the family of the deceased, plus court costs, the incident did not interrupt his participation in the Palio.

The horses have to make gravity-defying turns to negotiate the corners of the piazza
The horses have to make gravity-defying
turns to negotiate the corners of the piazza
Bianchini and Santini notably clashed again in 1853. Representing Oca, Bianchini remounted after an early fall, took the lead and remained there until the third lap, only for Santini, who had made a bad start riding for Torre (Tower) but recovered, to pip Bianchini’s horse and win, openly mocking his rival after they crossed the line for having denied him the opportunity for a 10th victory.

Santini himself still holds the record, jointly with the 18th century rider Matteo Mancini, for most Palio wins, at 15.

Bianchini married into a Palio family when Faustina Brandini became his second wife in 1836 following the death of his first wife, Assunta Angiolini di Fogliano. His father-in-law, Luigi Brandini, was the rider Cicciolesso, while his cousins, Giovanni and Agostino rode under the names Pipistrello and Brandino Minore respectively. 

He and Faustina had a son, Leopoldo, who grew up to race as Piccolo Campanino.

Nowadays, the two runnings of the Palio attract huge crowds of locals and visitors alike to Siena and have become a major part of the city's tourist trade. The races, which take place in the early evening, are preceded by a spectacular pageant. Such seats that are available for spectators are sold well in advance; most watch from the centre of the square, which fills to a capacity of around 50,000 before access is closed by the police.

Piazza del Campo is dominated by the red bricks of the Palazzo Pubblico and Torre del Mangia
Piazza del Campo is dominated by the red bricks
of the Palazzo Pubblico and Torre del Mangia
Travel tip:

Siena is one of Italy’s most beautiful cities. The Piazza del Campo is at its heart, built between 1287 and 1355 and consisting of nine sections of fan-like brick pavement said to symbolise the Madonna's cloak said to protect the city in dark times.  The Campo is dominated by the red Palazzo Pubblico and its tower, Torre del Mangia. The Palazzo Pubblico contains a museum housing some of the greatest of Sienese paintings, including Simone Martini's huge Maestà and Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegories of Good and Bad Government, once regarded as the most important cycle of secular paintings of the Middle Ages. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Siena was one of the major cities of Europe, almost as large as Paris.  Siena is said to have taken its name from Senius, having been founded by Senius and his brother Aschius, the sons of Remus and nephews of Romulus, the legendary founders of Rome. Thus Siena's emblem is the she-wolf who suckled Remus and Romulus.

Siena's magnificent Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta with its marble exterior
Siena's magnificent Cattedrale di Santa
Maria Assunta with its marble exterior
Travel tip:

Siena’s duomo is the Cattedrale Metropolitana di Santa Maria Assunta. The cathedral was designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. It has the form of a Latin cross with a dome and a bell tower. The dome was completed in 1264. The lantern at the top of the dome was added by the great Renaissance sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  The exterior and interior are constructed of white and greenish-black marble in alternating stripes, with the addition of red marble on the façade. Black and white have become the symbolic colours of Siena, after the black and white horses of Senius and Aschius.




Also on this day:

1858: The birth of the actress Eleonora Duse

1938: The birth of boxing champion Alessandro Mazzinghi

1941: The birth of bass-baritone singer Ruggero Raimondi


Home


8 April 2017

Federico Caprilli - equestrian pioneer

Study of horses revolutionised jumping techniques


Federico Caprilli in his cavalry uniform
Federico Caprilli, the Italian cavalry officer who revolutionised the way horse riders jump fences, was born on this day in 1868 in Livorno.

One of four children born to Enrico Caprilli and his wife, Elvira, Federico was bent on an army career from an early age. He enrolled as a cadet at military college in Florence at 13 years old, subsequently transferring to Rome and then Modena. He had no riding experience at the start, and when he graduated with the rank of lieutenant, though an excellent gymnast and proficient fencer, his horsemanship was marked as ‘poor’.

Nonetheless, he was assigned to the Royal Piedmont cavalry regiment, where his job, at a time when the introduction of weapons such as the Gatling Gun was negating any battlefield advantage a soldier had from being mounted, was to train horses for new combat roles, such as springing surprise attacks in difficult terrain.

It was there that he observed the way horses jumped obstacles and concluded that conventional beliefs about the way a horse should be ridden over jumps were entirely wrong.

Until Caprilli came along, it was accepted that the rider should use long stirrups and approach a fence leaning back in the saddle, legs stretched almost straight.  A sharp pull on the horse’s head was seen as the way to launch the jump.

This antique hunting scene shows a rider in typical  jumping position, leaning backwards
This antique hunting scene shows a rider in typical
jumping position, leaning backwards
Antique prints of hunting scenes inevitably show the rider in this position, leaning backwards in the saddle and appearing to jump fences in hope rather than any expectation of making a safe landing.

No one questioned this, even though the riding position was essentially the same as was employed in the middle ages, when heavy suits of armour compelled the rider to sit bolt upright.  The accepted wisdom, too, was that landing on its front legs was bad for the horse, especially carrying the additional weight of a rider, and that it should be encouraged to land on its hind legs, or at least on all four legs.

In fact, horses often injured themselves as a result of this flawed technique, either through catching the obstacle with their trailing hind legs or developing back problems.  What’s more, the jab in the mouth as the rider yanked on the reins often caused them to refuse to jump.

Caprilli, who used the relatively new device of photography to underline his findings, observed that when they jumped freely, with no rider, horses always landed on their front legs and were none the worse for it.

As a result, he devised a technique whereby the rider adopted a forward position, slightly out of the saddle, his upper body in line with the horse’s neck, his centre of gravity directly over the horse’s, and with no pressure applied to the animal’s mouth.  Caprilli also instructed his riders to allow the horse to think for itself about how it approached an obstacle and when it took off.

Caprilli's technique is demonstrated perfectly by this rider at Badminton in 2008
Caprilli's technique is demonstrated perfectly
by this rider at Badminton in 2008
The results were startling. Horses were suddenly much more willing to jump obstacles and were able to negotiate banks and ditches much more nimbly than before.  In short, they were ready to operate in terrain that would previously have been off limits.

Yet far from being congratulated, Caprilli received a frosty response from his superiors, who did not take kindly to their faith in the old methods being exposed as foolish.  Rumours, which it is suspected were false, began to circulate about his private life, of romantic entanglements with aristocratic wives, and he was posted to the south of Italy, out of harm’s way.

However, he continued to hone his techniques and when word of his excellent results in equestrian competitions reached his old regiment’s headquarters in Pinerolo in Piedmont, he was summoned back.

He was made chief instructor at the Cavalry School of Pinerolo as well as its subsidiary in Tor di Quinto (near Rome). After a year of training, riders who attended the schools were able to negotiate the jumps and obstacles of the training circuit even without reins.

Soon, as the Italian cavalry began to dominate international competition, riders came from countries around the world to study Caprilli's system and it became the new standard for any form of equestrian pursuit that involved jumping.

Caprilli died in slightly mysterious circumstances in 1907, when his body was found on a cobbled path in Pinerolo.  It was suggested that he had been attacked by a jealous husband or a resentful superior but there were no obvious signs that he had met his death in that way and it was concluded that his mount must have slipped on some ice, throwing him off, and that he had hit his head on the cobbles.

The duomo in Piazza San Donato in Pinerolo
The duomo in Piazza San Donato in Pinerolo
Travel tip:

Pinerolo is a beautiful town in the shadow of the alps, some 50km (31 miles) south-west of Turin.  It has a charming main square, the Piazza San Donato, overlooked by the cathedral of the same name, which dates back to the ninth century and which has a Romanesque bell tower and a Gothic façade. The church of Santa Croce, in Vicolo Barone, is another picturesque sight.

The commemorative plaque outside 115 Viale Italia
The commemorative plaque outside 115 Viale Italia


Travel tip:

In Livorno, where Caprilli was born, a commem- orative plaque marks the family home in Viale Italia, at number 115.  He was honoured in 1937 when the local horse racing track was renamed Ippodromo Federico Caprilli. At one time it boasted a fully illuminated track and could accommodate crowds of up to 10,000 spectators but it closed in 2016 after the company that owned it went out of business.



More reading:


Frankie Dettori - Milan-born jockey among all-time greats

The traditional horse race, the Palio di Siena

Luigi Beccali - Italy's first Olympic track gold medallist


Also on this day:


1848: The death of operatic genius Gaetano Donizetti


(Picture credits: Horse jumping by Henry Bucklow; Pinerolo duomo by Mattana; plaque by Piergiuliano Chesi; via Wikimedia Commons)

Home






15 December 2016

Frankie Dettori - champion jockey

Milan-born horseman among all-time greats


Frankie Dettori goes to post in the 2015 Derby on Golden  Horn, which he considers the best horse he has ridden
Frankie Dettori goes to post in the 2015 Derby on Golden
Horn, which he considers the best horse he has ridden
Lanfranco "Frankie" Dettori, the three-times British champion jockey, was born on this day in 1970 in Milan.

As well as winning the UK jockeys' title in 1994 and 1995 and again in 2004, Dettori has won more than 500 Group Races around the world, including 16 British Classics.

He won his first Classic in 1994 on Balanchine in the Oaks, the St Leger in 1995 on Classic Cliche, the 2,000 Guineas in 1996 on Mark of Esteem and the 1,000 Guineas in 1998 on Cape Verdi, finally completing the set at the 15th attempt when Authorized won the Derby at Epsom in 2007.

Dettori won the Derby for a second time in 2015 on Golden Horn, whom he rates the best horse he has ever ridden.

English-bred and owned by the diamond dealer Anthony Oppenheimer, Golden Horn won the Derby, the Eclipse Stakes, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for Wiltshire trainer John Gosden during the 2015 season, each time with Dettori in the saddle.

Apart from his big-race successes, which also include 24 Group Race wins in Italy and all of the Irish Classics, Dettori is best known for his unprecedented and so-far unequalled achievement of riding the winners of all seven races on a single day at Ascot in 1996.

Frankie Dettori moved to England  when he was 15 years old
Frankie Dettori moved to England
when he was 15 years old
Dettori's so-called Magnificent Seven including the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, which he won on his 2,000 Guineas hero Mark of Esteem.  Most of his winners started as favourite or second favourite but his Diadem Stakes winner Diffident was a 12-1 shot, which inflated the cumulative odds for the seven-timer to 25,051-1, enabling one punter who had predicated that Dettori would go through the card to collect more than £500,000 in winnings.

Dettori celebrated his final win on Fujiyama Crest by dismounting with the flying leap that was to become his hallmark, standing up in the stirrups before jumping sideways off the horse to land on his feet.

Dettori was born into horse racing.  His Sardinian father, Gianfranco, was 13 times champion jockey in Italy, as well as riding successfully in Britain, where he won the 2,000 Guineas in 1975 and 1976.  Frankie's dream was to follow his father into the profession and he left school at 13 to become a stable boy and apprentice jockey.

He rode his first winner at Turin in November 1986 but by that time had become apprenticed to the Italian trainer Luca Cumani at Newmarket and rode his first winner on British soil when Lizzie Hare triumphed at Goodwood in 1987.

Three years later he became the first teenager since Lester Piggott to ride 100 winners in one season.

Luca Cumani, the Italian trainer who gave Dettori his first job in England
Luca Cumani, the Italian trainer who gave
Dettori his first job in England
In recent years, Dettori's career has suffered a number of setbacks.  In September 2012 he lost his position as retained jockey for the powerful Arab-owned Godolphin Stable, for whom he had enjoyed considerable success over 18 years, and soon afterwards tested positive for a recreational drug, which led to him being banned for six months.

It was not the first time he had attracted headlines for drug use, having admitted in a television interview that he had regularly taken diuretics and laxatives that were subsequently banned in order to keep his weight off.

Yet Dettori, who had bounced back once before after being injured in a light aircraft crash in 2000, rebuilt his career and reputation, securing an agreement to ride for the powerful Qatar-based Al Shaqab Racing.

In 2016, at 45 years old, became only the sixth jockey to ride 3,000 winners in Britain, which put him in the company of Sir Gordon Richards, Doug Smith, Lester Piggott, Pat Eddery and Willie Carson.

After Predilection - like Golden Horn, trained by John Gosden - took him to the milestone at Newmarket in August, he again celebrated with his flying dismount.

Away from racing, Dettori, who lives in the village of Stetchworth, near Newmarket, with his wife, Catherine, and their four children, owns a number of restaurants in London and Dubai.  He supports Arsenal football club and has taken part in the reality TV show, Celebrity Big Brother.

The magnificent Palazzina di Caccia of Stupingi is close  to the race track in Turin where Dettori rode his first winner
The magnificent Palazzina di Caccia of Stupingi is close
 to the race track in Turin where Dettori rode his first winner
Travel tip:

Turin's horse racing track, the Ippodromo Stupinigi or Ippodromo di Vinovo, is close to the historic Palazzina di caccia of Stupinigi, which was built in 1729 as a hunting lodge for Victor Amadeus II, King of Sardinia, as one of the Royal Residences of the House of Savoy.  The house, overlooking a large expanse of park land and surrounded by ornate gardens, is built around a tall central dome and has 137 rooms and 17 balconies.  In 1773, it was the venue for the wedding of Maria Teresa, Princess of Savoy, and Charles Philippe, Count of Artois and the future Charles X of France.

Hotels in Turin by Expedia

Travel tip:

Italy's most valuable and prestigious horse race, the Derby Italiano, takes place at the Ippodromo Capannelle, a racecourse in the southern suburbs of Rome, between the Cinecittà district and Ciampino, which is home to the city's second international airport.  There is a train service to Capannelle direct from Roma Termini station, with a journey time of eight minutes.

Hotels in Rome by Hotels.com

More reading:


The Palio di Siena - Italy's most famous horse race

Luigi Beccali - winner of Italy's first Olympic track gold

Bruno Ruffo - Italy's first champion on two wheels


Also on this day:




(Picture credits: Golden Horn by monkeywing; Dettori on horse by Paul Friel; Palazzini di Caccia by Paolobon; all via Wikimedia commons)


Home