DAVID ‘Dandy’ Nicholls, one of the very best trainers of sprinters Britain has ever known, died on Sunday. He was 61.

Taking his nickname from the actress who played Alf Garnett’s long-suffering wife in the hit television series Till Death Us Do Part, Nicholls was a native Yorkshireman and first came to public attention as the jockey who teamed up with the late David Chapman’s flying filly Soba, winner of 11 races in 1982, including the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood.

She was unfortunate to be around at the same time as John Dunlop’s Habibti, who just denied her in the Group 1 July Cup at Newmarket.

Quite gruff where Chapman was quiet and self-effacing, Nicholls rode 421 winners over 21 seasons before turning his hand to training, in which sphere Make Mine A Double gave him his first winner at Southwell in 1993.

He acquired the unofficial title of ‘sprint king’ and never was an accolade more richly deserved.

Operating from his Tall Trees Stables near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, he won many prestigious sprint handicaps, including the Ayr Gold Cup six times and the Stewards’ Cup three. He saddled the one-two – Continent and Bahamian Pirate – in the 2002 Group 1 July Cup and an army of small backers followed his every move at a much lower level as selling and claiming winners went in across the board.

He dropped The Tatling to a Catterick claimer and lost him to Milton Bradley, merely shrugging and pointing out that races were there for the winning and his horses were always trying. In all he won 1,269 races and there were times when he seemed quite unstoppable.

MEMORIES

Memories of him abound – a squat, pugnacious figure in a dark suit at Glorious Goodwood when all around him looked like extras from Our Man In Havana – or the day, bluff Yorkshireman to his very core though he undoubtedly was, that Chapman’s Quito beat him narrowly in the Ayr Gold Cup very nearly brought forth a tear. Only very nearly, of course.

Nicholls and Kieren Fallon was quite possibly the ‘no nonsense’ partnership of all time. Very few words were spoken when Gift Horse won the Stewards’ Cup because they both knew it would win.

Billy Cray was still claiming when Evens And Odds won the same race a few years later.

No one knew him then and people have forgotten him now, but Nicholls knew he could ride.

“He would do anything for anybody,” Fallon said this week. “He’d make you laugh, he was a funny, funny man and a very good trainer.”

Nicholls had been ill for a long while and when the yard started to drop away it all happened very quickly. His last really good horse before retirement in February was Sovereign Debt, who won at Epsom on Saturday for Chapman’s granddaughter Ruth Carr but who also placed the gelding cleverly to win good races in Ireland.

He was married twice, to Norma Spaven, with whom he had successful jockey Adrian, and to Alex Greaves, the first woman to ride a Group 1 winner in Britain. He leaves two more children, Amy and James. As someone who has followed sprinters at all levels for the better part of 60 years, I have no hesitation in saying that Dandy Nicholls had few, if any, peers. Bradley was very good, and Fahey was quite exceptional, but Dandy was something special.

He was simply great at what he did, and none of us can ask for more than that.