Tony Pearn

Tony Pearn came from a military background allied to an active interest in racing. His father was leading owner and trainer three times in Gibraltar when stationed there during the early 1930s. Educated at Sherborne, he was commissioned into the Royal Marines in 1942, aged seventeen, and took part in the Normandy and South of France landings.

After the war, he served with the Commandos in the Far East. In 1946 he became secretary of the Hong Kong Services Race Club and both trained and rode winners on the Flat, including the United Services Cup at Happy Valley. It was while passing round the celebratory champagne after riding a double there one day that he met his future wife, Heather Gillespie.

By 1948 he was on active duty in war-stricken Palestine. While there, he was given the unusual assignment of collecting twenty polo ponies from the Trans Jordan Frontier Force and taking them to Palestine via Haifa to Malta, where the Army and Navy were keen to get the Services Polo Club restarted at Marsa.

On his return to England later that year, his Portsmouth posting gave him the opportunity to ride out at weekends for Ryan Price, who was then based at East Lavant, near Chichester. Although steeplechasing was his first love, he also competed in other equestrian activities, finishing fourth out of 39 starters in the cross-country phase of the 1951 Badminton Three-Day Event on Bambridge Boy. In 1956 he won the Foxhunters’ Show Jumping Competition at the Devon County Show.

He started riding in point-to-points in the early 1950s and gained one of his first victories on the grey Forest Lad in the Foxhunter’s Cup at the West Sussex fixture in 1953. Another was on Camille in the East Devon Hunt Members’ race in the spring of 1955. He went on to win the Cowdray Park Royal Marines Cup six times, the last of them in 1968 on Vivace.

He didn’t have any racing colours at the time of his pointing debut so he rode in a Royal Marines rugby shirt. He then developed his own colours from the shirt: navy blue, yellow, green and red hoops (the yellow and green being narrower than the others) on a white background, those being the Royal Marines belt in the correct proportions. He added a navy blue collar and cuffs to represent the link between the Marines and the Royal Navy, with a yellow cap to signify the colour of the Duke of Albany’s regiment, the forerunner of the Marines. Seldom has so much thought been put into deciding a set of racing colours.

In 1955 he bought Waking, a winner of point-to-points and a Folkestone hunter chase, to ride in the following year’s Grand Military Gold Cup. The horse was sent Les Kennard in Devon, the most convenient trainer to where Tony was then stationed. They made a disastrous start, being brought down at Wincanton, followed by ‘rider fell off’ at Newbury. However, they returned to Newbury on March 2, 1956 to win the three-mile Jack of Newbury Chase. Two weeks later, they finished runner-up to Cottage Lace in the Grand Military Gold Cup.

By the start of the following season, Tony had been posted from Devon to Salisbury Plain and so moved Waking to the Cholderton stables of former Flat jockey Jack Barratt. He rode Waking to win a three-mile chase at Plumpton on January 28, 1957 and then, fired by a long-held ambition, decided to aim Waking at that year’s Grand National.

By doing so, 32-year-old Captain Anthony Warwick Corey Pearn became the first Royal Marine to ride in the world’s greatest steeplechase. Alas, the experience was short-lived. His plan for the race had been simple, to avoid loose horses, but all that came to nought at the fifth fence when he was brought to a halt by the riderless Armorial, causing Hart Royal to cannon into him and swerve off to the right, directly in front of Waking at the very moment he was about to take off. So ended his 1957 Grand National adventure.

Captain Pearn rode Waking in nine of his ten races the following season and was only once out of the frame. He also won on another of his horses, Le Voyageur at Wincanton on January 16, 1958 and finished second on him in that year’s Grand Military Gold Cup, beaten three-quarters of a length.

He served as a steward of the Marsa Race Club in Malta and rode on the Flat while based there in 1959. By now promoted to Major, he made three more attempts to win the Grand Military Gold Cup, the nearest he got being fourth on Tullaherin Lord in 1960. He also finished second on that horse in the 1961 and 1962 renewals of Sandown’s Grand Military Hunters’ Chase.

While serving as GSO1 Plans in the Caribbean in 1967, Tony was notified of a horse for sale, a mare named Chamoretta, out of that great Aintree mare Tiberetta. As the winner of a novice chase at Sandown, she promised him a good ride in his final crack at the Grand Military Gold Cup in 1968. He bought the horse unseen and sent her to trainer Neville Dent’s yard at Brockenhurst. Unfortunately, Dent was unable to get a race into her beforehand and Tony was obliged to pull her up in the closing stages. Her next start was the 1968 Grand National, in which she was partnered by David Elsworth. However, she failed to emulate her illustrious mother, being brought down on the second circuit.

Tony left the Royal Marines in 1969, after 27 years’ service, becoming Joint Master of the East Devon Foxhounds. He was also appointed Administrator of the Medical Research Institute at Exeter University. His book The Secret of Successful Steeplechasing was published by Pelham Books in 1972.

He retired from race riding, having ridden three winners under National Hunt rules but many more in point-to-points. He had finished second five times in military races at Sandown. As an owner, he continued to strive for that elusive success in the Grand Military Gold Cup but was unable to achieve his goal. He last runner in the race was Bearys Cross, who was brought down in 2000.

Tony Pearn died in 2005, aged 80. One of his four sons, John, took over the distinctive Royal Marine racing colours. The Major’s granddaughter, Alice Pearn, wore them to victory in point-to-points and was placed in an Exeter hunter chase in 2010.