75 years in racing: the man who could wait

On 1 November 1951 a 16-year-old boy turned up at Klampenborg to be apprenticed as a jockey. On Sunday it is 75 years ago. Gert Hansen is 91, and he hung up his boots long ago – he still turns up at the Domino stable every single day. There are not many in Scandinavian racing who can match that span. The last time he sat on a horse in a race, he was 76 years old.

The first and the greatest

He had the first ride of his life on 8 November 1953 — and won. The race was Den Gyldne Spore, and the family has kept the date.

What really wrote Gert into the books came fourteen years later. In 1967 he rode Far Bell first past the post in the Danish Derby for Frank Isacsson and Jens Olsen. Six years after that he took the Swedish Derby at Jägersro on a grey gelding the whole of Klampenborg knew.

For Gert Hansen’s name is inseparable from Flying Drummer — “the Grey” — the greatest crowd-puller Klampenborg has ever had. Bone idle in his daily work, as Gert has described him, but with his heart in the right place when it mattered.

The two of them won the Dansk Eclipse Stakes three years running from 1973 to 1975, and their duel with Algarve and Ole Larsen in Berlingske Tidendes Ærespræmie still stands as one of the most gripping finishes in the track’s history: head to head, muzzle to muzzle, settled on the line itself by a short head.

At the same time he rode Lord Sinclair to five big-race wins, among them the Danish 2000 Guineas in 1973 and Klampenborg Store Sprint three times. Both horses were with Vinzenz Vogel, where Gert Hansen was first jockey — a great many of his big-race winners came from that very stable.

Three times — in 1966, 1970 and 1974 — Gert was champion jockey at Klampenborg.

His weapon was not strength but the clock. He had, by every account, the best judgement of pace among the track’s jockeys of his day, and it is that quality which ties the whole career together.

The trainer who rode his own horse

In 1984 it was all gathered into a single name. Kentucky Queen won the Danish St. Leger, the Mowerinaløb and the Swedish Oaks — and Gert Hansen both trained and rode her.

The Swedish Oaks at Jägersro is worth retelling in particular. The younger riders set a far too strong pace from the start, while Gert Hansen waited. And waited. When the order to go finally came, Kentucky Queen washed over the field and won by half the home straight. The win was noticed on the other side of the Atlantic, and the mare was sold to the United States.

As a trainer Gert reached eleven big-race wins in seven years. Mads Bomstærk took the Copenhagen Golden Mile, the Skandinavisk Grand Prix and Stockholms Stora Pris in the same season in 1988. Laphroaig won the Dansk Avlsløb and the Skandinavisk Opdrætningsløb in 1985, Fiji took the Danish Oaks in 1989, and Maren Bomstærk the Mowerinaløb in 1990.

Six of the eleven wins came with horses by the same stallion, Honduras, and counting Maren Bomstærk seven of them were bred by Stutteri Nippon. Gert Hansen had found a seam and dug it out.

In 1993 he handed the training licence to his partner Inge Mette Dejgaard – “Sisse” – and the two of them have carried the Domino stable on ever since.

The full stop. And the day after

Gert carried on riding. In 2011 he sat in the saddle in an exhibition race at Klampenborg at the age of 76. He rode work every morning well into his eighties.

The sport carried on in the family. His daughter Pernille Hansen became a successful professional jockey, and it was she who in 2006 gave GalopSport the best picture of her father’s working day: “My father mucks out every horse we have in the stable, and at the same time he rides up to four horses a day.” Gert Hansen was 71 at the time.

Then came the summer of 2018. “I had a fall which developed into my sight in one eye now being badly weakened,” he told GalopSport that autumn. “I understood that it was the full stop for me in the saddle, and I have nothing owing to me.”

That same morning he stood in the stable assessing the ground before the race day. “I have had a fantastic life with the sport,” he said. “I am 83 now and can still help out in the stable, which I am very grateful for.”

He was once nominated for the Guinness Book of Records. No answer ever came. Eight years on he still goes to work at the Domino stable alongside Inge Mette Dejgaard and BirGitte Voetmann.

Fairness and Gert Hansen have gone hand in hand the whole way, as it was put on these pages ten years ago, and it still holds.

GalopSport sends its warmest congratulations on the 75 years in the sport.