Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  Horses are individuals: some like to be up there with the pace at the front, others like the hurly-burly of pushing their way through a crowd. Some shrink from contact or stop the second they have their heads in front: jockeys therefore get horses to run for them in different ways. Race-riding cannot be a one-size-fits-all business. Sometimes they need strength, more often they need intuition. But above all they need the ability to transmit to their mounts the will to win. Kieren Fallon, riding as well in his 40s as he has ever done, whistles at his mounts to make them go. The late Greville Starkey used to try and disconcert his opponents in a tight finish with his brilliant imitation of a barking dog. The Duchess of Bedford showed me a photo of him doing just that in the Japan Cup that Jupiter Island won for her and Clive Brittain in the hands of Pat Eddery.

  One thing often forgotten is that jockeys often have no more than the time between climbing aboard a horse in the parade ring and the gates opening at the start of a race to get to know their mounts. In the autobiography he put together with the perceptive Jonathan Powell, Frankie Dettori reflected on the need to use that five minutes on the way to the start to become a horse’s friend:

  You climb into the saddle and feel how it walks, how it places its feet and how it looks at you and you must understand. When I sit on a horse I can tell its character within five seconds, its nature, its temperament and best distance, even whether it has got a kick or is one-paced. That is something I was born with.

  When a jockey like Frankie rides a horse into the starting stalls the animal does not know if he is going to be running half a mile or two miles. He doesn’t know where the winning post is:

  So it is down to me to make sure we become friends so that he will respond to whatever I ask him. You must work to build that bond. He has to have that trust in me to slow down and quicken up when I ask. Only then can you control the release of that huge potential energy during a race …

  The most important thing between man and horse is trust. You find it by body language and feeling. Horses have a sixth sense about the person on top. They can even feel you blinking. If they realise you are frightened they are just as likely to drop you straight away and bury you. It’s their natural instinct. They won’t stand for just anybody on their backs.

  An equally inspired horseman, Mick Fitzgerald, reckoned Frankie’s timescale a little optimistic. He told me:

  You’ve got ten minutes when you walk out into the paddock, five minutes while you take it to the start, five minutes to become acquainted with a horse before you ride it in a race. You’ll know very soon whether a horse is amenable to you, whether you can ask that horse to do something or whether you can tell it to do something – because some horses need telling and some need asking.

  It is, he says, a matter of finding out which is which: ‘Some horses just make a mess no matter what you do!’

  At Newbury one day Richard Hughes discussed his fondness for riding hold-up races, when he swoops from the back to grab first place on the line. One reason he does so, he replied, is that nine out of ten horses will only battle with the pain barrier for a hundred yards, so one burst is enough to ask.

  Little bits stick with you from different conversations. I spoke to Flat jockey Brian Rouse when he retired and went to Hong Kong about what was the crucial quality required: common sense above all, he replied. ‘Riding horses is like driving a car with no brakes. If you make a mistake you can’t rectify it in one stride.’ And no one conveyed the excitement of riding a top-class horse better than the talented amateur Sam Waley-Cohen, who has partnered Long Run throughout his career. The adventure-seeking Sam is a helicopter pilot, a bungee jumper and a white-water rafter but at the Cheltenham Literary Festival he described his favourite mount like this:

  He’s highly strung and can be a real challenge. In the stables he’s like a little lamb, quiet as you like. But lead him out into the parade ring and it’s as if he’s pulled on a suit of armour to go out to war – ‘Come out and have a look at me.’ Then, bang, it can be like you’re trying to sit on a box of fireworks. But when he gets into a rhythm with that ground-devouring stride he’s so smooth and relentless. Of all the adrenalin rushes I’ve had nothing comes even close to riding Long Run.

  One of several downsides of the controversies over use of the whip in recent years is that it has given the public the idea that getting horses to win races is all about physical strength and even brutality. Listen to Ruby Walsh however and he will tell you that 99 races out of 100 are won by a jockey’s intelligence rather than his physical strength. He also points out that jockey fitness is different to fitness in other sports and that they use their muscles in a different way. Football and rugby players stretch to be explosive. Jockeys don’t get strained hamstrings or quads because ‘For us it’s all about muscle compaction. When you are riding a horse the key is not to move. Everything is compressed. You’re trying to achieve a stillness on a horse’s back so that you can manipulate him the way you want.’ To avoid giving mixed signals from the saddle requires a totally different kind of fitness.

  What was also intriguing to learn is that Ruby lost 3lb when he first started riding regularly in England, simply from the race-riding, because riders in England start motoring at a much earlier stage of the race and races are truer run. ‘There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of you winning a race in Ireland if you set sail with five to jump. Not a hope. If you were foolish enough to try it you’d have three lads sitting up behind you on the bridle with smiles on their faces.’

  Talk to the old pros and they will agree that the standard of riding over fences is higher today, more professional than it has ever been. The two men instanced as examples every time are AP McCoy and Ruby Walsh. But their styles are in total contrast. Says Mick Fitzgerald:

  You couldn’t have more different styles. Ruby is very quiet. AP is a lot more aggressive, you see a lot more movement with AP, but both are just as effective. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Ruby is brilliant at what he does. He rides a very different race to AP. He’s a lot quieter, he allows the horse much more time to get into it. He does little things that you can’t actually see. If you watch Ruby you’ll see him make little moves, he’ll sit down a little bit lower on a horse, he’ll ask a horse to quicken a little but at a particular time because he wants to get into a position he wants the horse in. AP is a bit more aggressive in attitude.

  The results tell you how effective they are. I’ve ridden too against Richard Dunwoody. I found Woody to be the best that I’ve ever seen. He was brilliant at what he did. He was good in a finish, strong, he was brilliant at presenting a horse at an obstacle. AP has taken that and he’s found a little bit more aggression; he’s a real winner, AP. Anybody who backs him, you know you’re going to get a run for your money. Somebody said to me if I was skint, down to my last tenner and I wanted a jockey to ride a horse for me there wouldn’t be any question, it would have to be AP every time.

  Perhaps the last word should go to Martin Pipe, who has had Peter Scudamore, Richard Dunwoody and Tony McCoy ride for him. When I asked him to compare them, this was his response:

  All were very good jockeys. But they all school differently, all have a different motivation. Some jockeys just like to go and pop them over the fences, some like to go a good pace over the fences. Some jockeys ride better in better races than in sellers. I like to treat every race the same. Whether it’s a seller or the Champion Hurdle the objective is to try and win. It’s just as important to win the seller. Not all jockeys have got that feeling in every race: ‘today’s the day we’ve got to win’. AP does like to win everything. He’s got the determination no matter what kind of race it is. Dunwoody was a very good jockey, very stylish, perhaps he improved in big races. Scu was a natural, very good: again, a great front-running jockey. He went out, knew the pace, knew the horses would jump and got them jumping and going. Scu was very good at getting a result. AP is a genius, nothing
but the best.

  In the end then it comes down to will, perhaps even more than technique, and that takes us back to the chemistry.

  A few jockeys have managed to combine riding on the Flat and over jumps, and a number of the National Hunt jockeys were forced into the winter game by struggles with their weight. Two top jockeys moved the other way: both Graham Lee and Jim Crowley have become top riders on the Flat after giving up jumping. Jim Crowley came from a point-to-pointing family – ‘I had a pony under my arse even before I could walk’ – and I talked to him at Sandown one day about the different skills required. ‘You race so much tighter on the Flat,’ he said:

  You have to tidy yourself up. You have to keep your horse balanced and get him in the best possible position. In jumping there’s more time to recover if you miss the break and are not quite where you want to be. It’s not so good on the Flat if you’re seventh or eighth and wanted to be second or third … you’ve got to be on the ball.

  But what about the weight – moving down from a natural 9st 5lb when he was riding over jumps to a regular 8st 7lb? ‘Oh I just eat more healthily,’ he replied airily. ‘In the summer heat with up to ten rides a day it’s not a problem.’ A pity that the rest of us don’t have that slimming option.

  Are jockeys masochists?

  Wincing through the bludgeonings and knifings suffered by the heroes of Dick Francis’s racing novels it struck me one day that his leading characters rarely survive a book with their bodies intact. Just as James Bond will never get through a film without being dangled from a window, thrown into a shark-filled pool or strapped to a table with his manly assets threatened by an advancing laser beam, so each Francis hero gets a going-over by thugs in a racecourse car park, a deserted stable yard or a horsebox parked in a lay-by.

  The Queen Mother’s former jockey clearly became inured to pain during his years in the saddle and I sometimes wonder if all National Hunt jockeys aren’t born masochists.

  I once had permission to spend a winter day in the jockeys’ changing room at Newbury. As muscular, painfully thin young men joshed and rushed about in the ladies’ tights they use to keep warm under their breeches, some still pink from the sauna, you could see livid scars on their backs and strange protuberances on the shoulderblades and collarbones exposed by their wasting. There were the puckered scars of surgery and vivid lines down one rider’s back as if he had been run over by a harrow. As Mark Perrett, who rode on the Flat as well, emerged from the shower as spare as a coat hanger, he would have been an ideal model for a medical class: there wasn’t a bone in his body you couldn’t see.

  Mick Fitzgerald had one eye all but closed and the other bruised, and was dabbing at a nose still bleeding from a resetting operation the day before, but he was smiling: he had just learned he was to ride Remittance Man at the following week’s Cheltenham Festival.

  John Kavanagh, then Nicky Henderson’s dependable number two, who was recovering from a broken leg, limped down the passage to be pummelled by the Jockey Club’s ‘flying physio’ Rabbit Slattery on her treatment table. Had an old man left the betting shop walking like he did you’d have laid odds on him not making it to the pub next door; John Kavanagh came out and coaxed and drove half a ton of horse athletically over fences for three miles and then rode a stirring finish.

  Jockeys loped in with their barrel-bags amid the gentle scuffing of brush on boot, the slap of saddle soap on well-worn leather as the valets – the talismans and father confessors of the weighing room – prepared their kit. One of them, Tom Buckingham, told me that Hywel Davies never went back to Doncaster after a horrific fall in which his horse cartwheeled on him and he literally ‘died’ for two minutes on the way to hospital.

  One well-known figure was sleeping, his head on a heap of towels in the corner as he fought to mitigate the flu which had dogged him for two days and which had not been confessed to his retaining yard. When I commented on the number of smokers, another valet noted, ‘Well it’s a novice chase next isn’t it?’ As others wandered about in various states of undress, an occasional lady rider would slip in, eyes fixedly to the front, to collect her parcel of colours from the valets.

  Simon McNeill, nowadays a starter, took a spectacular tumble three out to sympathetic groans from the jockeys not riding, as they watched on TV. When he came in, Rabbit led him straight to her table. ‘It’s the next day they notice it,’ she said. He himself was in no hurry to see the doctor, fearing the dreaded red ink entry on his jockey’s passport that would mean he was stood down for two days. He had fancied rides at Stratford the next day and was annoyed that an ambulance man had alarmed people by suggesting he’d taken a blow that had left him unable to speak: ‘The only reason I couldn’t speak was because I was bloody well winded!’ He added, ‘When I was younger I used to bounce up immediately to convince others I was OK. Now I lie there until I’m sure I’m OK.’

  It really is mind over matter and the market economy. Always fearful that too many days out of the saddle will see others becoming fixtures on their rides, and that owners and trainers will acquire new loyalties, they shrug off in a matter of days the injuries that would keep the rest of us off the tennis court for three months.

  It is instinctive. At Cheltenham in 2011 Dickie Johnson was thrown through the running rail among photographers as his horse fell at the last. Groggy and with blood all over the place, his first words as trainer Philip Hobbs reached him were, ‘Don’t you start giving away my rides.’

  At Ascot in November 2012 we crowded to greet the rider of J.P. McManus’s winner My Tent Or Yours. No racegoer would normally fail to recognise eighteen times champion jockey Tony McCoy. But on this occasion they could have been excused for doing so. AP was 30 shades of grey, his normal pallor heightened by the bandaging all across his nose and upper lip. Twenty-four hours earlier at Wetherby a horse had lashed out with its legs and caught him full in the face. As trainer Nicky Henderson said, ‘A few inches closer and AP would no longer have been on this planet.’ Hearing of the accident, Nicky had started making plans to put AP’s friend and rival Barry Geraghty on his Ascot runner instead, especially when McCoy’s agent Dave Roberts told him nobody could possibly be riding the next day after the injuries he had suffered. But McCoy, the original iron man, is different. A plastic surgeon in York had applied twenty stitches inside and outside his mouth and nose, his dentist had fixed him up with a couple of temporary teeth and he reported for duty the next day, telling us through swollen lips that his injuries were ‘superficial’. Just to make sure it did not hinder his chances of riding the next day, McCoy had had the medical work done on him without anaesthetic, though there was a flicker of memory across his face as he recalled, ‘They were a little time doing it.’ Even Nicky Henderson, who has seen plenty of brave and determined jockeys in his time, had been shocked when he saw the man about to ride his horse. He told Jonjo O’Neill, McCoy’s most regular employer, ‘I wanted a jockey, not the Phantom of the Opera.’

  McCoy had already ridden a hundred winners that season before the success of My Tent Or Yours and was 25 winners clear of his nearest pursuer in the championship, Richard Johnson. He could easily have afforded to give himself a few days off to recover, but that would not be the real McCoy.

  McCoy’s great friend and fierce rival Ruby Walsh is the same. In March 2011 the most colourful sight at Sandown on the Saturday before the Cheltenham Festival was not the jockeys’ silks but the vivid bruising around Ruby’s eye as he returned on his first winner since breaking his leg in November. The blues, reds and yellows visible on his stitched-up face were the result of a fall on King Of The Refs at Naas three days before. Had he feared the worst as his mount had gone down? Oh no, said Ruby matter-of-factly, in a jump jockey’s life there is all the difference in the world between ‘ordinary nuisance pain’ and ‘oh my God I’ve broken it’ pain.

  I remember too Graham Lee in his days as a jump jockey after he had won the Betfred Gold
Cup at Sandown on Hot Weld in 2007. Few had expected him to ride that day, after a crunching fall in Ireland on the Tuesday. Hadn’t he been worried too, after the field had galloped on without him and Aces High? ‘Well you know how you react to a broken bone and I didn’t react that way … when you know it isn’t a broken bone you just bash on.’ It was the sheer matter-of-factness of the comment that struck me.

  In his autobiography Mick Fitzgerald talks harrowingly of ‘the pungent smell of bone on bone’, the shattered ankle and two broken necks, the second of which ended his riding career. The first time he did it he lived with the pain for eleven days before going to see a specialist. ‘How did you get here?’ he was asked. ‘I drove.’ ‘You won’t be driving back – you’ve broken your neck.’ Admittedly the stoic Mrs Oakley walked around for twenty years with a broken neck before it was revealed by a skiing accident. It does happen. But fortunately she doesn’t ride over fences.

  The jump jockeys were just as hard in the old days. Once when Jack Berry broke a leg in his riding days he got a horrified St John Ambulanceman to drag him off the course. He didn’t want to be taken to the local hospital but one nearer his family, so he kept himself going with nothing but a few cigarettes until the end of the day’s racing. When his friends finally got him to hospital the surgeon found the leg was broken in six places. Before long Jack was out riding exercise, complete with his plaster-of-Paris pot. And on the day he returned to the saddle he broke his wrist.

  It was Australian Les Carlyon, one of the finest racing writers there has been, who told me the ultimate story about suffering jockeys, in the shape of the Adelaide-based Les Boots. So regularly did Les Boots finish up in hospital after a ride that his wife used to pack his pyjamas in his racing kitbag. His record on the Flat was depressing: he never rode a winner, in fact Boots never even collected any place money either. Over jumps it was worse. He was fine riding work but on the racetrack his record was 39 starts for 42 falls. Yes, those figures are the right way round. Les Boots never completed and in one race he fell, remounted and fell again. The extra fall was the one he took from tumbling off the stretcher on the way to the medical room.