Jockeys sorted out the rows in my day
The nature of Bryony Frost’s complaint against fellow jockey Robbie Dunne, leaked at the weekend with all the Anglosaxon detail of what was allegedly said between the pair, has led to Dunne being charged with “conduct prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct or good reputation of the sport”.
It has, it seems, opened a can of worms and has given a misleading impression of the jockeys’ changing room as a club for misogynists with their own set of house rules.
I do not suppose the changing room has changed an awful lot in the 22 years since I stopped riding. But, back then, something like this would never have got beyond the initial incident, let alone to first base or allowed to become “bullying”. A senior jockey or a valet, often an avuncular, wise old former professional jockey, would have stepped in, knocked heads together, hands would have been shaken and it would have been forgotten a day later. It would never have been allowed to fester away over the course of four years.
The first time I entered the inner sanctum of a British jockeys’ changing room as an amateur was at Newmarket’s July Course in the summer of 1980, a 16-year-old having my first ride – the horse went faster to the start than it did on the way back but we will gloss over that.
I was nervous enough about the race but not half as much as I was changing opposite Lester Piggott, Willie Carson and Steve Cauthen, all of whose autographs I was seeking barely a year earlier.
But, from initial intimidation, for the next 20 years the changing room became like a second home, a place of comfort, safety and often laughter. Not even my own father could come after me in there.
It was full of camaraderie, good humour and everyone looked out for each other. If you were having a good day, someone would bring you down to earth with a quip, and if you were having a bad day, someone would do their best to lift your mood. When a jockey retires, it is not the race-riding and adrenalin buzz they miss – it is that changing-room camaraderie.
But you abided by certain unwritten rules out on the racecourse, like keeping straight and not trying to poke up the rails, where the decisions you made could be at best dangerous, at worst, fatal.
Of course there was the odd spat
but those incidents stand out for the very reason they were so rare.
Because trainers, owners, most officials, press and angry punters are not allowed in there, it is a sanctuary.
I found out the same restrictions to other personnel do not apply in France where, one day at Maisonslaffitte, a France-based English trainer marched in and in front of all my French racing heroes, Freddie Head, Yves Saint-martin and Cash Asmussen, screamed words not even in Dunne’s alleged repertoire to berate me for cutting up his runner in the finish of a lowly amateur race as if I had just cost him the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe.
As the centre of attention, I went the colour of a feu rouge, protested my innocence and felt it odd that I was not summoned to the stewards’ inquiry for my misdemeanour.
A quarter of an hour later, the trainer returned, sat down beside me and whispered his apology. “Sorry,” he said, barely audibly. “Wrong jockey.”
Racing can be a violent business. It remains the one sport where you are followed by an ambulance at work. There is a duty to look after each other.
Because the perspective of a jockey in a race is so different to what we can see on cameras, there has to be a degree of self-policing when someone is perceived to be not riding safely.
Because this Frost-dunne case has been allowed to run so far, though, it looks like goodbye to all that. No one will want to step in now, however senior.
Without a degree of selfpolicing, the sport will be the worse and probably more dangerous because of it.