Ahead of the QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot on Saturday [Oct 21], the ever-popular former trainer Clive Brittain recalls how his star filly parlayed victory in historic G1 event (then run at Newmarket) into a barnstorming Breeders’ Cup triumph
As part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge series, the QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot on Saturday [Oct 21] is a ‘Win and You’re In’ qualifier for the $4m Longines-sponsored Turf at Santa Anita on November 4
Clive Brittain is fast approaching his 90th year and nowhere near as mobile as he was in the days when he might break into an impromptu dance routine to celebrate a big win – but the ever-popular former trainer’s memories of his brilliant filly Pebbles remain undimmed since her spectacular 1985 campaign.
Having won the 1000 Guineas as a three-year-old in 1984, Pebbles went on to make history as the first-ever British-trained winner of a race at the Breeders’ Cup as a four-year-old at Aqueduct in 1985.
She had already become the first of her sex to win the historic Coral-Eclipse and then one of the easiest winners ever of the Champion Stakes – now run at Ascot, with ‘Win and You’re In’ status as part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge series, but then still part of the traditional Newmarket calendar.
Pebbles was never the soundest and she lived on her nerves, and so when the Classic winner was kept in training at four, Brittain needed to employ all of the guile and wisdom he had gleaned in a lifetime in racing. However, not for nothing was he dubbed ‘The Smiling Pioneer’ by author Robin Oakley in his biography.
“She was a brilliant filly – but like a lot of brilliant fillies she wasn’t straightforward,” recalls Brittain, now 88. “She had so much character that I found the only way to train her was to let her have 95 per cent her own way and train her on the remaining five per cent.
“One thing that certainly made a big difference was having the gelding Come On The Blues, who had won the Hunt Cup at Royal Ascot, as a companion,” he goes on.
Boyfriend and girlfriend
“They were boyfriend and girlfriend and had boxes next to each other, so they could talk to each other and nuzzle. If she went racing then he went with her, even to Aqueduct, where he ran the night before the Breeders’ Cup and ran really well.
“She was never 100% sound either, and she only used the grass gallops very sparingly. I think I was the first trainer to have his own pool, and she did more swimming than galloping.”
Although Pebbles had won the Guineas carrying the colours of her breeder Captain Marcos Lemos, she had been sold to Sheikh Mohammed before that year’s Royal Ascot, where she was second in the Coronation Stakes. A chipped bone then kept her off the course until October, when she was again runner-up, this time to the French colt Palace Music, in the Champion Stakes.
On her reappearance at four she kicked off with a smooth G2 win at Sandown before being beaten at Royal Ascot by 33-1 chance Bob Back in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, then also a G2 contest.
She was subsequently found to have been in-season at Royal Ascot, and she was a different filly next time in the Eclipse, where she justified the decision to keep her in training with a brilliant two-length defeat of the subsequent Arc winner Rainbow Quest, with Bob Back only third.
Patience rewarded
Brittain had to shelve Arlington Million plans when Pebbles went off her food in the summer, but his patience was rewarded in the most glorious fashion on her return in the autumn.
The Champion Stakes, held at Newmarket until 2011, is one of the most prestigious ten-furlong races in the calendar and Brittain left nothing to chance in the filly’s preparation.
He takes up the story, saying: “Steve Cauthen was claimed for Slip Anchor, so we booked Pat Eddery and he came to ride her in a racecourse gallop. I put her in with two of the worst horses in the stable, because I didn’t want her to do too much.
“I knew she would settle behind any horse, but once you set her alight there was no checking her. Pat said riding her was a piece of cake and that she had different gears.”
A deep field at Newmarket featured six G1 winners, headed by the seven-length Derby hero Slip Anchor and the former St Leger winner Commanche Run, who had won the equivalents to the modern-day Juddmonte International and Irish Champion Stakes. The 1984 winner Palace Music and the easy Irish Oaks winner Helen Street were also among the ten runners in the Dubai-sponsored contest.
In a stunning display Pebbles brushed them all aside with contempt, making up ground from the rear effortlessly against the rail before switching around Slip Anchor to win the race, barely coming off the bridle as she quickened three lengths clear.
Eddery described the experience as “like driving a Rolls Royce against Minis”. Brittain agrees, and says: “She was the best horse Pat had ever ridden (Dancing Brave’s Arc win came a year later). She absolutely cruised through the race and made top-class horses look second-rate.”
Having kicked off at Hollywood Park in 1984, the Breeders’ Cup was in only its second year at Aqueduct 12 months later and Pebbles had not been nominated for the race by her former owner Captain Lemos.
Extraordinary lengths
Sheikh Mohammed duly paid $240,000 for a supplementary entry to the Turf. Though equivalent to around $700,000 in today’s terms, it would have been small change to the brother of the ruler of Dubai, but Brittain once again went to extraordinary lengths to ensure Pebbles did herself justice.
He says: “Pebbles was an athlete and very agile, so I had no worries about her turning at the Breeders’ Cup, but Aqueduct was particularly tight and so we set up a special gallop for her with three tight turns in it at home at Newmarket so that she would know what to expect.”
A much bigger fear was that the parade at Aqueduct would upset Pebbles, who was the only filly in the race, so Brittain had to come up with a ploy to get her to the start without her blowing her top.
As usual he was one step ahead, and a ruse involving taking Pebbles through a service tunnel under the stands which he’d seen used for beer deliveries and slipping a compliant gateman $100 enabled her to avoid much of the razzmatazz.
Brittain grins at the audacious move. “We had permission for Come On The Blues to pony her to the start, but if I’d asked if we could use the service tunnel it would have been a definite ‘no’,” he says.
“But if you don’t ask and then bend the rules then it's up to them to find you out! The most important thing was to get her to the start in a fit state to do herself justice, and there wasn’t one race in which we didn’t do something different.”
The race itself wasn’t without incident, and Pebbles and Eddery – who were unfavorably drawn in gate 13 of 14 – found themselves in a pocket down the far side and then carried back approaching the far turn before the gaps opened up for her approaching the straight.
Memorable race call
Sent through a daring gap on the rail by Eddery, Pebbles swept past the front-running Teleprompter a furlong from home and then held the former Australian champion Strawberry Road by a neck, in the process smashing the track record by more than a second and earning the Eclipse Award as the Champion Female Turf Horse of 1985. No wonder she was dubbed “England’s superfilly” in a memorable race call from Tom Durkin.
“Pebbles was badly drawn on the outside but you never had to give Pat any orders,” recalls Brittain.
“He just rode her as he found her and dropped her in before using her speed. I was never worried about her staying twelve furlongs because she settled so well, but she also had so much speed that she could have been winning at six furlongs.”
Cauthen, who had ridden Pebbles in her first three races of the season, had a rear view of her from the runner-up in 
both the Champion Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup Turf. Asked how good she was, the Triple Crown-winning jockey replied: “Just look at what she did – she found three lengths more trouble than I did and still she won.”
Brittain accepts that it is not possible accurately to compare the champions of different eras, but the one-time stable lad set himself up as a trainer on the proceeds of shrewd betting and he says he would back Pebbles to beat any of the modern greats.
Even Enable, the brilliant winner of the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Turf, not to mention three King Georges and two Arc de Triomphes?
“Oh yes,” he chuckles. “Without a doubt!”
… and after the Breeders’ Cup
Sheikh Mohammed chose to keep Pebbles in training for the top middle-distance races of 1986 (rather than his Fillies’ Triple Crown winner Oh So Sharp), but she suffered inflammation of a shoulder cartilage and was retired to stud that July without seeing the racecourse again.
Unfortunately, like many outstanding racemares, she failed to produce anything of note. She was sent to the Darley Stud's Fukumitsu Farm in Japan and died in 2005, having been retired from breeding in 2002.
Clive Brittain says: “She wasn’t the soundest as she didn’t have the best bone, and I think that’s probably what she passed on more than her brilliance.”
In October 2023, Pebbles became the first filly to be inducted into the QIPCO British Champions Series Hall of Fame.
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• Visit the QIPCO British Champions Day website
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