10 February 2023 , 12:37
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Legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach, who died on Thursday aged 94, almost had as many hits on the racetrack as in the charts.
He enjoyed his latest number one only last month when the ex-Jessica Harrington-trained Duvet Day, which he owned with wife Jane, won the Astra Stakes at Santa Anita.
The composer of timeless classics such as ‘Walk On By’, ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ and ‘Close To You’, had been involved in horse racing since 1968 as both owner and breeder.
The Oscar winner enjoyed his biggest successes in the nineties with Soul Of The Matter and Afternoon Deelites.
Soul Of The Matter won seven times and finished second to the legendary Cigar in the first running of the Dubai World Cup, ending with career earnings of £1.9 million.
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He bred Heartlight No. One who he named after the Neil Diamond hit 'Heartlight', which only reached number five, but she went to the top on the track where she won five times and was voted 1983’s Eclipse Award winning three-year-old filly.
The filly’s regular jockey Laffit Pincay rode Bacharach’s first winner Battle Royal in 1968. He said: Burt was just a good friend. I will always be grateful to him, because after my first wife passed away, he took me under his wing.
“My kids were very young and he would invite us out to dinner almost every weekend. I will always be very appreciative of that. That’s something that I will never forget. I tell you, it hurt me to hear that he passed away.”
Richard Mandella, who trained both Soul Of The Matter and Afteroon Deelites, said: “One day I’ll never forget, he actually had my parents, my wife and I picked up at the airport in Vegas, and we were taken to Caesars Palace where we had front row seats for one of his concerts. It was the one night he came back with Dionne Warwick.
“I remember Sugar Ray Leonard was in the booth next to us and Burt stopped the concert and introduced me and then Sugar Ray Leonard. I’ll never forget it.”