Frost still getting goosebumps after ‘amazing, frustrating’ year
Fairy-tale Cheltenham win was soon followed by a change of luck, she tells Marcus Armytage
If ever proof was needed of the roller-coaster nature of a jump jockey’s career, then Bryony Frost’s experience back in March provides it. In the space of four days she went from the career high of riding Frodon to victory in the Ryanair Chase in front of 60,000 people at Cheltenham to less glamorous Southwell the following Monday where, in front of one man and his dog, a fall from Midnight Bliss left her collar bone in pieces.
Thursdays at the Cheltenham Festival are supposed to be the annual meeting’s quiet day but in one gloriously triumphant hour Frost became the first female jockey to win a Grade One race over jumps there.
Within 35 minutes, blind owner Andrew Gemmell had won the Stayers’ Hurdle with Paisley Park to seal racing’s most satisfactory hour of 2019.
“Going to Cheltenham I was really relaxed and I always say for every great triumph there is usually a big defeat beforehand and that is exactly what had happened to us,” reflected the nominee for BT’S Action Woman of the Year Award. “At Cheltenham in November I had just lost my right to claim a weight allowance as a conditional rider, Frodon carried top weight and the owners were loyal to keep me on him in the Betvictor Gold Cup. We finished second, staying on, and the day afterwards I sat down with Paul [Nicholls, trainer] in the office and we decided we could be braver and ask more of him.”
With more forcing tactics, Frodon returned to Cheltenham in December to win the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup and in January to win the Cotswold Chase. He arrived at the Festival on something of a roll.
“In the Ryanair I knew everything I would ask for he would answer, so I went out there to gallop and jump and see how long we could keep going for. When we turned in towards home and he got headed [by Aso] I felt the race was slipping away.
“Not many horses will battle back once headed and coming to two out, I was thinking you’ll get beat, this is a hard place to come back from – but he did, and he battled. To say it was an unbelievable moment is not giving it justice.
“It was a fairy-tale moment. They are written about and you watch them, but you never believe it’s going to happen to you.
“He will always be one of my diamonds, even on dark days. It’s still talked about, little snippets pop up and I still get goosebumps about it. Frodon is a very intelligent athlete, he knows how to perform at his peak, you enjoy the ride and it’s the best seat in the house being on the top of him.”
Bouncing back from injury has to be a jockey’s stock-in trade and last season Frost, 24, spent five months sidelined by injury, rode for several months of it with a fractured shoulder blade and still won the conditional jockeys’ championship. In the summer of 2018 she had fractured her sternum, her T8 and
T7 vertebrae, lacerated her pancreas and liver and had an aneurysm in between the two organs when her saddle had slipped at
Newton
Abbot. It had kept her out of action for nearly four months. Victory on Present Man in the Badger Ales
Chase at
Wincanton announced that return while winning the Oaksey
Chase on Black
Corton at Sandown on her first ride back after five weeks out with the Southwell collar bone is a victory she rates in importance only just behind Frodon’s.
“It was a funny season, amazing but frustrating, one that taught me a lot of lessons, patience really. The one in the summer took a long time to come back from. Internal stuff ’s difficult because you can’t see it and it’s frustrating when they tell you not to walk over 200 metres because your heart rate will go too high. “With the collar bone I struggled because I had only just got my wheels turning again so I took myself out of the bubble, disappeared, and did my own stuff at a health hotel in Miami.
“I was on 49 winners rolling into Sandown. Blackie had not won that season, he had run good races in defeat but we were not quite getting our day. People were dissing him a little and I had taken great offence about that.
“I remember going down to the start, just getting comfy again, getting your goggles down. As soon as we sailed out over the first, it was back where I wanted to be. It’s the only place in the world where you think you are living.
“And when we jumped out over the last I couldn’t see anyone. For me that was a very big moment, it proved we could get back up and still do our best by our horse.”
One thing that sets Frost apart is how she articulates a jockey’s relationship with a horse in a race. “I love letting people into my world through my eyes and show them doing something you love is what you want to achieve.”
She does not see herself as a role model for women in the sport. “Yes
I’m a girl and since I was a kid I have never seen myself any different from anyone else. I’ve always kept up with my older brothers, I never thought I would be held back because I was a girl or have advantages because I was a girl. I just thought if I just be ‘me’ and do it the best I can.
“I wanted to try to help people and be helped. If you can do all this then you will get to where ever you want to go. Jockeys are all individuals. It is like handwriting, we all ride differently and all horses are different.
“I don’t think a girl has to win a Grand National, I’m proud as punch to say my dad [Jimmy, on Little Polveir in 1989] won it, I used to fluff my feathers up when I was young about that. There are boundaries to be broken but that happens on a daily basis, sometimes small and sometimes big. If you are good enough the opportunities come to you, sometimes life is unfair and throws curve balls at you with injuries, but you’ve just got to keep kicking.”