In the late 1970s Doncaster had no jumps meetings between the end of the flat and January. A new fixture was created on Friday and Saturday 18-19 December 1980. Races that weren’t sponsored were named after horses with a Yorkshire connection. One of them was the Sea Pigeon Handicap Hurdle, which was run at that pre-Christmas meeting until 2005.
Sea Pigeon was one of the stars of the Golden Age of jumping that lasted from about 1970 to 1983. In a long career he finished seventh in the Derby and won his second Champion Hurdle at the age of eleven. In between he mixed big flat handicaps with top-grade hurdling, and if anything was still improving when most horses would have passed their peak.
At the end of his three-year-old season he was considered a bit of a rogue, was gelded and sold. His new owner Pat Muldoon paid £8,000 for him and sent him to Yorkshire to be trained by Peter Easterby. The operation was a complete success. The horse became a top-class hurdler and in due course replicated that improvement on the flat. He won the Chester Cup in 1977 and 1978 and the following year’s Ebor Handicap carrying ten stone, a weight-carrying record still unbroken.
He was runner-up in the Champion Hurdle to Monksfield twice before reversing the from with him by winning in 1980, his fourth attempt at the race. He saved the best till last, for he won it again, in amazing style, in 1981 at the advanced age of eleven. Deputising for Jonjo O’Neill, his regular pilot, John Francome was well aware of the need to hold him up for a late run to make use of his flat-race speed. Coolness personified, the multiple champion jockey took a pull after jumping the final flight before asking his mount to go on and take the lead – and win. Francome said later, “He is quite simply the best horse I have ever ridden.”
Market Rasen had a one-off Sea Pigeon Handicap Hurdle on 9 December 2006.