Racing demons
Robin Oakley
In Bucharest recently I encountered some Romanian proverbs. ‘Always eat the end of the bread: your mother-in-law will love you,’ said one. And, more to my liking: ‘Always empty the last drops out of a bottle into your glass: people will like you.’ Sometimes people in racing, facing the strains for our pleasure, find themselves tilting the bottle a little too often. It was sad for Timmy Murphy, for example, after his skilful, patient Grand National-winning ride on Comply or Die that his triumph was clouded by most commentators presenting it as a redemption from the months he spent in prison back in 2002 after drunken behaviour aboard an airliner.
Timmy has told the story of his one-time alcoholism in a searing autobiography so he has learnt to live with people raking over the incident. But after forswearing drink he redeemed himself long ago with his riding. Others beat it, too, such as Gold Cupwinning jockey Bobby Beasley. He even became a publican, muttering at the optics in the bar every morning, ‘You thought you were going to get me, you little bastards, but you didn’t.’ Another redemption many will hope to see this season is that of 28-year-old Robert Winston, a jockey who has had glittering success snatched away from him on one hideously painful occasion and who has occasionally done his best to hurl it away himself.
In August 2005 Robert led the jockeys’ table with 98 winners and looked sure to finish the season as champion rider. Then in a terrible fall at Ayr he smashed both his upper and lower jaw. Months of enforced idleness saw him spiral into chronic alcoholism. He was, by his own admission, ‘in a big, black hole’, drinking himself to death.
He booked himself into an Irish clinic and successfully faced up to his drinking demons. But then there was another to cope with. Along with a number of other jockeys Robert Winston was had up by the racing authorities for passing on information about his mounts, and in February of last year he received a one-year riding ban. It was a lesser punishment than those meted to others, largely because there was no suggestion that he had ridden any horses to lose. But it has helped to push one of the strongest and most able riders of his generation back down to the foothills of the racing mountain.
When I saw Robert at Kempton last Saturday it was hardly an auspicious moment. His first race ride for Brian Meehan, Once Upon a Grace, reared up in the stalls and had to be withdrawn. Of his other two mounts just one, Meehan’s Bailey, made the frame. When the gelding failed to quicken a furlong out many jockeys would have accepted defeat. But Winston kept on pumping and snatched third place on the line with the ride of a determined man.
He is good enough any day for Brian Meehan who says, ‘You employ a jockey to do a job and you can depend on him to do it. He’s very strong.’ Robert is riding work for top yards like those of Mark Johnston in Middleham and Sir Michael Stoute in Newmarket, aware that they have their own first-call riders but hopeful of picking up those good spare rides which will help him back towards the big time.
Robert Winston’s racing life started by racing ponies bareback round burned-out cars on the council estates of Finglas, near Dublin. After starting in Ireland at 16, he moved to ride for Richard Fahey in Malton, where he soon caught the eye as an apprentice on The Butterwick Kid, beating a certain Pat Eddery by a neck. He became champion apprentice and cannot praise Fahey too highly for his loyalty to the young jockeys he brings on. ‘If you put the work in there you’ll get the rewards.’ Then there were spells riding for Tim Easterby and Lynda Ramsden, whose husband Jack helped him to broaden his experience riding in America for Richard Mandela. ‘He is an absolute legend. He taught me so much about timing, pace, switching leads, the lot.’ What I had forgotten, like many, was that the horrific fall at Ayr was not the first time he had broken his jaw in a riding accident. In an earlier spill at Haydock when both reins snapped he ‘went out of the back’ and was kicked by following horses. That was three months out and the first time the drink took hold. He had worked himself out of that but by the time the Ayr accident happened was finding his out-of-racing life hard to handle. ‘Everything seemed to catch up with me.’ He dropped his hands carelessly in a finish, losing a race he should have won. ‘My head was wrecked and I had to stop riding for a while.’ Now, the drinks problems behind him and the riding ban served, he is determined to graft his way back to the top. ‘I have come back as hungry as I have ever been,’ he says. ‘I am starting to ride for the right people again and if the chances come I will grab them with both hands.’ Brian Meehan, he says, will never think twice about putting him up in a decent race and he is hopeful of rides again from Sir Michael Stoute. ‘It’s great just to go down there and ride good horses for him at home. Just getting the feel of a good horse gives you that buzz.’ ‘I want to be a world-class rider and there is only one way to get there, keeping my head down and working. I’ve proved before, with ten years in the north, that I can work hard, now all I can do is rebuild.’ Punters might find it rewarding to keep an eye on a man on a mission.
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