Powell’s career on rise again after dark times
Jockey taking place at top table following a tough few years which included rape allegation and friends’ suicides
⮞talented
Few jockeys have travelled a road as bumpy as the one fate led Brendan Powell down but, finally, he is taking the place at jump racing’s top table that his ability warrants and he can cap a fine start to his first season as stable jockey to Colin Tizzard by winning today’s Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury on Fiddlerontheroof.
Powell, 26, has the pedigree; his father, also Brendan, won the 1988 Grand National on Rhyme ‘n’ Reason, and his mother, Rachel, led up a winner of that race. From an early age, when he was riding as an apprentice on the Flat, it was clear he had the talent.
But in the snakes and ladders of his career, each ascending rung was matched by an open-mouthed serpent, none bigger than the one in November 2016 when he was one of three men investigated following an allegation of rape. It hung over them for 13 months until, just before Christmas 2017, he received a call telling him it was over.
“Racing kept me focused,” he recalls. “Riding was the only thing which kept me going. It did have an effect on me because it cost me my job [with Jamie Snowden] but I had to put a mental block on it.”
He has been rebuilding his career and his reputation ever since, but last year, in just the space of a few months, he was pall-bearer at the funeral of two of his weighing-room colleagues and great friends; Liam Treadwell and James Banks, who both took their own lives.
“I was very close to both but particularly Liam,” he explains. “But because of all the other stuff, I think I was still emotionally numb to it. I’ve had a lot of support from family and friends and, for a 26-year-old, I’ve got a lot of experience of racing and life.”
And there are positives. “It’s given me a better outlook and, as important as racing is, there are more important things in life. I used to come back after a bad day’s racing thinking it was the end of the world, and while
I’m not taking it any less seriously, now I’m seeing the bigger picture.” Having started out as a conditional with the Tizzards, when Golden Chieftain, his first Cheltenham Festival winner, fell at the last in the 2016 Midlands National while seven lengths clear it seemed to signal the end of his association with the yard. “There was no fallout but they had a policy of using the best available and that ship had sailed from my point of view,” he reflects.
But on a spare morning on the way to Wincanton, he rode out again, saw a few old faces, started picking up spare rides for the yard and a few days before the end of last season, a torrid one for the Tizzards, he rode Princess Midnight to victory for them.
“I suppose I was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “I rode a double for them, Joe [Tizzard] asked me about my commitments for this season, and my other trainers [Oliver Sherwood, David Bridgwater and Michael Scudamore] were delighted for me when I talked it over, which says a lot about them. ”
His 34 winners this season have already bettered his 31 last year. Powell’s confidence is sky high. “When you ride for people who put you under pressure, things go wrong,” he says. “When your trainer makes you think you’re the best, you ride like the best.”
If Fiddlerontheroof lacks for anything today, it will not be from the saddle.