Racing rallies round ex-jockey with unique skill set
Gliding, carpentry, inventing – Steve Jobar could do them all until his life was changed by shattering MND diagnosis
Had fate not intervened, Steve Jobar might have changed the course of racing history. In the 1981 Grand National, he was a couple of lengths behind the eventual winner, the Bob Champion-ridden Aldaniti, and travelling well, when his mount Pacify, on whom he had won the 1980 Midlands National, stumbled and fell at Becher’s Brook on the second circuit.
Champion had, of course, not long recovered from testicular cancer, in the days when the cure was almost as likely to kill you as the ailment. The fairy-tale outcome, perhaps sport’s most inspiring, went on to become the subject of a successful book and film Champions, starring John Hurt in the title role.
Two years ago, Jobar, 74, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, an illness for which there remains no cure and, for him, as it was for the Scotland rugby player Doddie Weir and will be for rugby league’s Rob Burrow, there is no fairy-tale outcome.
There are few sports that look after their own like racing and it will come together for him at a lunch and auction at Newbury Racecourse tomorrow, to be attended by 450 people, which is expected to raise over £100,000 for the MND Association.
“It is the most beastly disease,” said Jobar’s wife, Dot, erstwhile landlady of the Five Bells at Wickham. “I noticed he was slurring his speech a couple of years ago. I asked others if they noticed it and they thought he’d had too much to drink, but Steve doesn’t drink.
“That’s all that it was, he wasn’t ill or anything but we came out of an appointment with the neurologist with the diagnosis and the advice, ‘Do what you can, while you can’. He’s managed to keep his mobility pretty well but he can’t speak [he communicates by writing things down], swallow, eat or drink now and we’re currently waiting for a feeding-tube operation.”
Jobar, who will be attending the lunch, is a remarkable man, with so much more depth to him than just being an ex-jockey. “I love him because he can do anything,” said former champion jump jockey John Francome, who, along with trainer Richard Phillips, will be auctioning a number of live lots, including a Philip Blacker bronze of a horse bucking, entitled “Freedom”, and a Peter Curling original painting of Heighlin winning the 1980 Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham, Jobar’s biggest winner.
“Heighlin was a quirky little horse and Steve got on well with him so kept the ride for David Elsworth,” Francome said. “He was even second in the Cesarewitch on him on his only Flat ride. When he packed up [in 1985], he became a master saddler. But not only could he make you a saddle or bridle, he became a carpenter, so could make you a staircase. He was a good jockey but he could do anything and is a grafter. On top of it all, he was a top-class glider pilot.”
Blacker, who was third in Aldaniti’s National on Royal Mail, sculpted “Freedom” at the end of the Covid lockdowns, hence the name. He shared a house with Jobar when they were riding.
“I went to ride out for Alec Kilpatrick aged 14,” he recalled. “I was in the string behind this tiny chap called Steve who was the same age. That was the first time I met him. One morning, I woke up at 2am with someone throwing gravel at my bedroom window and it was Steve asking if he could stay a couple of nights. Three years later, he was still there.
“He was a very good jockey but a bit of a maverick. He had his own ideas. I’m sure if he’d toed the line he’d have ridden more winners [132, including 11 on a horse called Stickler at Fontwell]. He never felt the need to project himself into trainers’ good books and he was quiet, he didn’t say much.
“I really got to know him when he was second jockey to Jeremy Glover at Stan Mellor’s and I was getting the odd spare ride for Stan. When Jeremy retired, Steve stuck me in for the job as first jockey.
“I should think it was the biggest case of professional suicide there has ever been, but that was Steve – he didn’t think to put himself forward.
‘He could turn his hand to anything. He made me a sauna from a pile of wood’
“But he had a very creative brain. He could turn his hand to anything. He made me a sauna from a pile of wood that lasted at least eight years, and he’d invent things.”
Recalling the 1981 National, Blacker added: “We were both riding for Stan, me on Royal Mail and he was on the stable third string, Pacify. Going down to Becher’s, I heard this voice, ‘Hey, Phil, I’m going as well as you are’. And, with that, he hit the deck at the next.”
Until last year, Jobar took part annually in the national gliding championships. He once flew from Lasham, near Alton, to Long Mynd in Shropshire and back in aid of spinal research, a charity never too far from all equine sports. Now, however, the cause is even closer to home. Too close.