I’m over the Moon on my date with destiny
LAST YEAR Racing Correspondent MARCUS TOWNEND, 52 and overweight, was challenged to ride in a thoroughbred horse race. There have been some dramatic ups and painful downs but tonight he faces the starter alongside five other hopeful, would-be jockeys at Windsor.
SO it’s here. The day I thought might never happen. My date with destiny. My chance to try to do what I spend my life writing about — riding g in a thoroughbred horse race.
The stage is pretty big: the most prestigious meeting of the season at Windsor, featuring some of the world’s best jockeys.
Andrea Atzeni, George Baker, Jim Crowley, Frankie Dettori, Adam Kirby, Ryan Moore and the season’s top apprentices, Josephine Gordon and Tom Marquand, will all be in the weighing room. And so will I.
It is the equivalent of a fan, or one of my football-writing colleagues, getting the chance to change alongside Premier League stars and then get a chance to be called off the bench to play the final few minutes in one of the country’s top grounds.
The main events on Windsor’s Ladies Day card will all be over by the time I head to the paddock with my fellow competitors. But, for all of us, it will hopefully prove to be the experience of a lifetime.
Three of my fellow riders — Frankie Amatt (Richard Hughes), Daniel Bonner (Ralph Beckett) and Jordan Dorward (Keith Dalgliesh) — all work for trainers, riding out every day.
Sally Parry, after working in racing for 20 years, is now a district nurse, while Clare Salmon, CEO of the British Equestrian Federation, is so attached to her mount Secret Missile that he acted as the best man at her 2015 wedding.
Suddenly, I’m thinking I am not the most bonkers person in this line-up. But I will be the most inexperienced.
Just getting here has been a challenge. Losing over 30lbs wasn’t quite as hard as I feared. It helped I had a motivating target when the hunger pangs struck.
For a while, porridge (for more than one meal a day) was slightly addictive. But it has been increasingly tough to stick to a ‘jockey’s regime’. The fitness work has also left me feeling much brighter physically.
But there were times when this day looked like it wouldn’t happen. It looked a million miles away when I first sat on some black and white ponies at my local riding school in St Albans in October.
It didn’t look likely when my Derbywinning jockey coach Michael Hills was left with a worried expression on his face after Darroun changed his legs and I went crashing into the side of the indoor ride at the British Racing School at Newmarket in April.
And it looked even less like happening after I fell off Simathur while riding out at the Scottish stable of Lucinda Russell in May — a fall which so damaged my ageing, weak body that I had to spend four weeks on the sidelines.
Targets had to be adjusted but making tonight’s race has much to do with the support and encouragement of trainer Geoffrey Deacon, partner Sally, their welcoming staff, Charlotte, Lauren and Alex, at his Compton stable north of Newbury — and a sevenyear-old gelding called Moon Trip.
On Deacon’s magnificent gallops high on the Berkshire Ridgeway, Moon Trip has been both my tutor and my guide.
He built my confidence enough for me to take part in tonight’s contest at a race meeting celebrating 10 years of HEROS, the Lambourn-based charity that has re-trained and rehomed over 600 racehorses. I am grateful to owner Andy Pittman for allowing me to ride Moon Trip.
In my fundraising, I have also had tremendous support from bookmakers, racecourses, trainers, leading breeders and the public.
Despite all the practice, the race itself will be a new experience. My colleagues have been gleeful in reminding me how close Windsor sits to the Thames — but I am hoping not to need a rescue boat.
Back in the spring, respected jockey turned racing journalist Tom O’Ryan, who sadly passed away this week, offered me a few gems of advice.
‘Hang on to that neck strap — he’s your friend,’ he said with a smile.
I’ll be hanging on tonight, Tom.