Lizzie’s hoping to strike Gold for girl power
THERE is the glamour of the red dress and incessant demands for interviews that come with being the first female jockey to line up in the Gold Cup for 33 years, but today we find Lizzie Kelly busy forking out hay from a wheelbarrow. This is the reality of life at Culverhill Farm in George Nympton, a North Devon parish comprising 175 inhabitants, a church, an inn and almost no other amenity at all, where the only sound to be heard across the morning air is a semi-distant clip-clop.
Turn into the 50-yard drive of the farm and the quiet is punctured by Nutmeg, a Jack Russell barking her head off as a welcome- cum-warning to this visitor as we walk past assorted farm animals into the stable box where Kelly is working.
‘Riding is like a day off after this,’ says Kelly, sipping a mug of tea outside the converted barn she lives in, adjoining the house belonging to her stepfather, trainer Nick Williams, and mother Jane.
‘It is lovely to think this is how I spend my days. I can’t believe I do this for a job. It’s an amazing life. These horses are not just moneymaking machines. They are like pets. They have little personalities. Or big personalities.’
A big personality is a fair description of the long-jumping, eightyear- old gelding Tea For Two, Lizzie’s ride in Cheltenham’s Gold Cup showpiece, making her the first woman since Linda Sheedy in 1984 to make it there.
‘He’s not a personable horse,’ she says of Tea For Two in a much more sympathetic way than it might read, as well as singing his athletic praises.
‘He’s more interested in food than people. Some horses love attention, but he is, “Please, just leave me alone, you weird human”. All the best horses have certain kinks in them.’
The daily stable chores on the farm where the 23-year-old grew up were not paying off before the New Year’s Day meeting at Cheltenham that was screened on ITV. But, after a lean spell, she won twice that day, including on Coo Star Sivola, one of her four possible rides this week, a win that ushered in better times.
Although she gave up regular drinking while studying event management at Winchester University — watching her contemporaries ‘drink and drink and drink, and get fatter and fatter and fatter’ — she spent the night of her New Year’s Day successes with a friend, Daisy, polishing off three bottles of ‘ cheap Prosecco’ between them while watching Absolutely Fabulous.
HANDED
her current job as a conditional jockey by her stepfather and mother after a spell with Newmarket trainer Neil King, she had proved she is more than just a pretty mascot for the fairer sex in a sport dominated by men.
She has gained a reputation as a fine jockey, overcoming what she calls the ‘ trainer’s daughter stigma’. But were there any hardships along the way as a woman in a tough sport?
‘It is harder for girls,’ says Kelly with no hint of bitterness. ‘A lot of women struggle initially to have that feeling of belonging. I felt like a guest at the start. I have stuck through it and made some really good friends in the weighing room. I have been accepted, but I have been riding for a while now.
‘Nobody has openly said anything chauvinistic. But I do remember a particularly hideous guy from a racing channel absolutely slating my riding.
‘He did it a couple of times. It was ridiculous because he even slated me when I had just ridden a winner. He was taking a dig when it was not necessary.’
While Kelly is speaking in her personable and frank manner, a mouse trundles along by the outside table where we are sitting. Kelly picks up the no-longer-barking Nutmeg and turns the dog towards her prey. Nutmeg grabs the mouse in her teeth and wanders off. Breakfast.
Kelly can maintain her racing weight, about 10st 4lb, with only mild vigilance. That means not too much bread and potatoes.
She usually has a boiled egg, possibly with a slice of toast, or porridge for breakfast, soup for lunch and a homemade stir-fry as likely as not for supper.
Keeping fit comes through riding, mucking out and swimming, which has replaced running as her extra-curricular exercise of choice. The great hardship is life driving on the road, not least from somew wheree e as remotee ote as Geo Georgege Nympyp ton. She stays regularly in the houses of friends, including with Daisy in Swindon, and with an aunt in Worcester.
‘A lot of people are good to me. The glovebox of my car is full of keys for people’s houses,’ she says with a laugh.
‘Being away all the time is the thing I struggle with. But I describe the lads — the jockeys and valets in the weighing room — as a group of big brothers.
‘They are always there when y you need help. All of them. If t they are my a age, two y years older, 1 10 years o older, I can sp speak to them. ‘But it takes sacrifices.sacrifices I was in a relationship, but he was essentially jealous of what I was achieving and that was hard. YouYo have to be selfish and you h have to be realistic. I’m never goi going to stop doing what I am doing for anyone else, and if they can’t fit in and accept it, it’s not going to work, is it? But it is not something I worry about.
‘Jump racing is trickier than Flat racing and there are questions like, “If you have a child, would you go back? Is your weight going to be OK?” But you cannot think about that. I say, “B****r it, I am going to do it”.
‘I am 23 and I have a lot of time left. My clock isn’t ticking.’
She is a keen writer, an A-grade English literature student at A-level, and puts her thoughts down in a form of diary in ‘abstract,
poem, prosy kind of way, a bit along the lines of Sylvia Plath’.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend and I wanted to record my thoughts about my life. I may try to turn it into a book one day.’ Racing journalism attracts her. She enjoys her media work, including her appearances on ITV’s Saturday morning Opening Show.
‘They are really nice people,’ she says of the ITV team. ‘You would be happy to spend a night out with them. Some of the old Channel 4 coverage would make you turn the TV off. It was boring. The way ITV are doing it is more fun.’
And as for Tea For Two and her historic ride this week? ‘ Probably more than any other “girl reference” in my career, being in the Gold Cup is an appropriate topic. I can see why people want to talk about it. There is a nice vibe from everyone I speak to.
‘It’s an open race. I can’t expect anything, but to be in the enclosure at the end would be great.
‘But, as my Mum said, “Whatever happens on the day, enjoy the journey”.’
Kelly is putting on her riding hat as she closes the interview. The tack room and her next ride of the morning await.