Peacock, Raymond

Handicap hurdler Hydrant (left) was Ray’s next winner, at Haydock in November 1960, followed by Distinctive Flower at Nottingham in January 1961. Distinctive Flower, who Ray rated as the best he rode, won twice during the 1961/62 season but was ridden by a promising 5lb claimer named Johnny Haine on both occasions. Ray’s next visit to the winner’s enclosure was after getting 20-1 outsider Barslipper up on the line to earn a dead-heat with Haine’s mount Upton Grove at Ludlow in September 1962. He then won on Distinctive Flower at Ludlow in October. They were the first two of six winners Ray rode that season, including a brace of selling hurdles on Lustleigh Lad and one on handicapper Radnor Fair.

Juvenile hurdler Vilone won twice for Ray during 1963/64 – a photo of him jumping the last at Nottingham appeared on the front page of the following day’s Sporting Life – while Lustleigh Lad and Radnor Fair both obliged again, giving him four winners for the season. That tally was doubled to eight in 1964/65, making a quick start with winners on both days of Ludlow’s September meeting and finishing the campaign by winning the Whitsun Selling Hurdle at Uttoxeter on John’s Hunter.

Encouraged by offers from owners, Ray followed his brother Jack’s footsteps by taking out a trainer’s licence on August 1, 1965, based at Tilstone Paddocks, Tilstone Fearnall, near Tarporley. He combined training with riding for two seasons, with John’s Hunter becoming his first winner as a trainer-rider when winning another Uttoxeter selling hurdle on Easter Monday 1966. His second – his final victory as a jockey – came at Warwick on, May 2, 1966, aboard Unwick’s Peace.

On November 2, 1967 he married Carmen Davies, who, besides riding horses for her husband in amateur riders’ races, also bore him a son, Timothy, who would also go on to ride under NH Rules, and a daughter, Sarah. Carmen was also his assistant trainer.

Ray’s best horses during the early 1970s included multiple chase winners Dad’s Lad, whose many victories included Ascot’s Sapling Novices’ Chase and Cartmel’s Lancashire Cup, and Miss Soundly, winner of Uttoxeter’s Charles Lewis Cup; not forgetting the remarkable veteran Self Raising, who won a selling hurdle and a selling chase at Cartmel’s 1973 Whitsun fixture when aged 14, and came within a length of landing the corresponding chase as a 15-year-old the following year.

But undoubtedly the best horse Ray trained was Rushmoor, whom he saddled to win the 1984 Scottish Champion Hurdle and, more importantly, enjoyed his finest hour in the 1986 Galway Hurdle, coming home eight lengths in front of top-weight Spring Forward to become the first British-trained winner of the ultra-competitive handicap. Rushmoor also finished runner-up in Sandown’s Imperial Cup and third in the Chester Cup.