MINORU AND ABOYEUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 151, 23 December 1938, Page 13

MINORU AND ABOYEUR

Jogging along the dusty country roads of Turkey, clambering over the rocky tracks of the Balkans, are probably many horses which are the direct descendants of two Derby winners, Minoru and Aboyeur. In a hospital not very far from London is a sick stud groom who brought the horses out of revolutionary Russia at the end of the war and got tnem as far as Constantinople. General Sir Tom Bridges, wno described the rescue of the horses in a broadcast recently, told an "Evening Standard" reporter that he had been unable to find a trace of their ultimate fate Minoru, King Edward VH's Derby winner oi 1909, was later sold to the Russian Government. Aboyeur, who was awarded the 1913 Derby after the disqualification r' Craganour. went to the Imperial Racing Club at St. Petersburg for 18,000 guineas. At the outbreak of the Russian revolution these two Derby winners were in a stud farm ih Moscow, in the charge of Joseph Clements, an English stud groom. Fearful for the safety of his charges, and hearing of Denikhrs counter-revolution in South Russia, Clements set off with them to the Black Sea. Arriving there he found the Denikin campaign collapsing and troops being evacuated. He begged that the horges should be taken. At first they laughed at him, but when he mentioned their magic names the horses were taken aboard ship and transported as far as Constantinople. Rather against Clements's wishes, they were handed over to members of the old Russian Jockey Club on the understanding that they were to go to Serbia, But many years later news reached London th t they had been seen still in Constantinople, where they had been at stud.