The odd couple taking racing by storm
Two riders with just eight winners between them last season are a surprise hit on Facebook, writes
When they were late for a signing, the crowd started chanting ‘Wocket Woy’
It is mildly ironic that within Britain’s wider equestrian community the best known of the current crop of jockeys after Frankie Dettori, and, perhaps, Richard Johnson and Ryan Moore, neither of whom really court popularity, are two men who between them rode eight winners during the 2015-16 jump season.
But under their alias “Wocket Woy and the Pwoducer”, Mattie Batchelor and Marc Goldstein have become an internet phenomenon in the world of the horse, and what began as a bit of fun riding out one day two years ago has bloomed into an eagerlyawaited weekly Saturday morning ‘show’ on Facebook with some 150,000 followers.
With their own inimitable brand of humour, I dare say they are bringing as many people into the sport as the professional PRS at Great British Racing. As jockeys, they were rarely asked for an autograph, but at Olympia Horse Show last year the authorities had to move them to a different spot because the queues were blocking other stands.
When they were half an hour late for a signing, the crowd started chanting “Wocket Woy” when they finally arrived. Not even Nick Skelton got that sort of welcome. Their attendance at southern showgrounds is in much demand.
Batchelor, 40, has always been the weighing-room clown, with a ready quip for any situation. When AP Mccoy was narrowly beaten by a female jockey and returned clearly disappointed, instead of offering his condolences, Batchelor muttered in a stage whisper: “I think she’d have won on the second.”
He was at Worcester last night and will be in action this weekend in Jersey, where he has been champion jockey for the past four seasons. When he won his second title (13 winners) he told Mccoy: “Once you’ve won one championship the rest are all the same.”
When he rode at Aintree he likened The Chair to a block of flats, but his biggest moment as a jockey came in 2011, when he won the Hennessy Gold Cup on Carruthers, one of the most popular victories in the weighing room ever. No one is more surprised by their snowballing celebrity than Batchelor
or Goldstein. Originally they were riding out two racehorses, Wocket Woy and Nobby, on the downs above Lewes, when Batchelor bet Goldstein he could canter his mount without his hands on the reins.
The next time Goldstein filmed it on his phone, put it on Facebook, it got a few comments, and though Wocket Woy was originally the horse, it is now Batchelor’s character, a know-it-all who thinks he is good at everything and knows better than the experts – I think we all know one of them – but, crucially, with an inability to pronounce his ‘r’s. Goldstein is cameraman, editor (the Pwoducer) and the straight man who sets up Wocket Woy to make a fool of himself, and having tackled such big subjects as show jumping, dressage and Shetland pony racing, they are now branching out into other sports.
One of their most recent offerings was Wocket Woy’s advice, much of it proffered from the back of a horse which he rode with boxing gloves, to the Anthony Joshua camp before his fight against Wladimir Klitschko.
At the press conference following William Whitaker’s first Hickstead Jumping Derby win last year, after the rider had been grilled by the equestrian press, Wocket Woy stood up and asked the rider the “question everyone wants to know” – what is your favourite biscuit?
Modern sport occasionally needs someone to prick its vanity and lighten it up and, it seems, in that respect, Wocket Woy is widing to the wescue.