RICHARD BEDMORE ULBRICH was born in Peterborough, a city in East Anglia, in 1931, not far from the heart of English racing – Newmarket. As a schoolboy he first visited that course. He saw Nasrullah and Tudor Minstrel (a horse which, he says, in his mind’s-eye remains his most visible impression) race in the 1940s, and warms to the “golden-age” of British race-riding when the great riders Sir Gordon Richard, Charlie Smirke, Charlie Elliot and Harry Wragg stood apart from a coterie of accomplished race-riders.

From that nostalgic background emerged a study of the history of the thoroughbred and of horse-racing, initially through the stallions; and therefrom converting to the importance of the maternal influence, an arena, until now, largely neglected.

Widely travelled and having lived in England, South Africa and Australia, he dwells on a time when racing was not the commercial vehicle it is today – when horse, rider and trainer were the centerpiece of the sport – now sport-cum-industry.

Apart from his many articles and reference papers, Richard is the author of three acclaimed publications, See How They Ran (1981), The Great Stallion Book (1984), and Richard Ulbrich’s Peerage of Racehorses (1994).

This latter book was such a large edition that no further updates were planned and instead a project was started to get the data online as the ultimate reference for the thoroughbred—today known as www.ulbrichspeerage.net.