It started on a pony ...now I’m racing at Windsor
AT the end of October, Racing Correspondent MARCUS TOWNEND, 52, started to learn to ride. On Saturday, having lost over 30lb and ramped up his fitness, he will take part in a charity thoroughbred horse race on Windsor’s biggest day of the season.
THE picturesque stable at Compton, now the base of trainer Geoffrey Deacon and his team, was once used as the location setting of BBC drama Trainer.
Badly scripted and pedestrian, the BBC series was canned after two series. I am hoping the latest drama set at Hamilton Stables will have a better ending.
What initially began with a latenight alcohol-fuelled challenge will conclude when I partner Deacontrained Moon Trip. It has involved sitting on a pony called Ernie at my local St Albans riding school in October before even riding a thoroughbred for the first time in April.
Despite a race time of 7.50pm, it will not exactly be peak-time viewing and any resemblance to a proper jockey will be tenuous.
There will also be an equal lack of calls for repeats but the race, run in aid of Lambourn-based racehorse welfare charity HEROS, will be the culmination of 10 months of early-morning alarms and a learning curve so steep that I have, quite literally, fallen off at times.
This race debut was supposed to have come in July but, after missing over a month’s riding after one of those spills, I did not feel ready.
I am not sure I am now but, with the help of Deacon, his welcoming staff and a calm (for a racehorse) bay gelding called Moon Trip, I should be.
The ups and downs have included a first gallop up the hallowed Compton grass gallops in Berkshire, when my steering went so awry that Deacon might have felt the need to strap a satellite navigation to my crash helmet.
Since then, I have managed to stay on course and the finishing touches are being put to my preparation this week, which included a canter up the Compton sand yesterday on Moon Trip with Silver Ghost and Lauren Page-Smith anchored in behind.
It was routine work but a session which allowed me to get more of a feel of the jockey boots with paperthin soles that I will have to wear. I will also need to ‘dummy run’ — the use of the word dummy could be misinterpreted — in my super slippy race-riding breeches, which appear to have been made from the same material used for cheap supermarket plastic bags.
But I have one big positive on my side. . . Moon Trip.
Running in charity races wasn’t exactly on the agenda when the seven-year-old son of Cape Cross was bred by Sheik Mohammed’s Darley Stud and he managed three wins for trainer Mark Johnston, two of them for champion jockey Silvestre de Sousa.
His latest victory for Deacon came over hurdles at Plumpton last year and he was third at Salisbury last time out over a mile and three-quarters. That makes Saturday’s six-furlong sprint up the Windsor straight almost like a warm-up for him.
My aim is to get back to the paddock before The Human League — the post-race entertainment — strike up.
My fellow jockeys include stable staff with trainers Ralph Beckett, Keith Dalgleish and Richard Hughes and this experience has increased my admiration for them because day-in, day-out they ride often difficult horses in dangerous situations and well out of the limelight.
I will be an outsider in more ways than one. The chances of me winning on Saturday are slim. But, hopefully, HEROS will be the winner.