WONDER WOMAN
Frost a marvel
THERE is something singular about Bryony Frost. Something different. Something that makes her stand out. Something that has encouraged people to predict she will become the greatest woman jockey there has ever been. It is a quality you often see in top sports stars. It is a level of single-mindedness that feels, to those of us who live our lives by conventional parameters, slightly unnerving.
There is a beautiful lyricism in the way she speaks about horses. She is only 22 but she talks like a poet laureate for the sport. ‘A human being will cover their emotions,’ she says, ‘but a horse has no worries. He doesn’t need to lie. They get nervous but they don’t get embarrassed. I would love never to be embarrassed. That would be so cool. Never be red-cheeked.’
She is sitting in a deserted bar on a bleak, bitter winter afternoon at Huntingdon talking about her mounts as if they are people. Last month, she won on Frodon in the Crest Nicholson Handicap Chase at Cheltenham and his reaction to their victory gave her more joy than anything else. It is never about her. It is always about the horse. It is always the horse’s triumph.
‘ The whole grandstand was cheering for Frodon,’ she says, ‘and his ears were pricked and he had a spring in his step and he thought he was king. Too right. Look what he did. Of course he should believe in himself. He came back squealing.
‘That’s how good he felt. He was in the stable yard and the girls said: “He’s chatting away to himself, he thinks he’s marvellous.”’
On Boxing Day last year, Frost became the second woman, after Lizzie Kelly, to win a Grade One race when she won on Black Corton, at Kempton. The leading racehorse trainer, Paul Nicholls, has shown great confidence in her. She could have several leading rides at the Cheltenham Festival next month, another test for her growing reputation. Many are tipping her to become the first female jockey to win the Grand National.
Frost has star quality. She is open, charismatic and popular and full of optimism and hope. Last week, she became the first- ever group-wide ambassador for Jockey Club Racecourses. The racing establishment knows a good thing when it sees it. Frost’s enthusiasm for the sport is infectious. ‘I’ve got a strange head on me,’ she says, but it is her obsession with horses and with winning that is part of her appeal.
Take her childhood. It was horses, really. Nothing else. Her dad, Jimmy, won the Grand National on Little Polveir in 1989. He is a trainer, her grandfather was a trainer. Paintings of ancestors riding horses adorn the walls of the family home in Buckfastleigh, on the edge of Dartmoor. The Frosts ride, they hunt, they fall, they get back up, they ride again.
Her father broke his back in a riding accident. Her brother broke his back in a riding accident.
‘All my family have broken their backs,’ s he s ays. Not t hat it dissuaded her. She was riding across Dartmoor by the time she was four. She sat on a racehorse when she was nine. ‘Ever since I opened my eyes,’ she says, ‘a horse has been in the picture of my life.’
As a kid, she was a star in Devon and Cornwall pony racing. She won 50 races, was Devon and Cornwall champion several times.
Everything else came second to riding her ponies and training them. She has become a woman of unending optimism and energy.
School was an inconvenience to be endured until the bell rang at the end of the day. Friends? Friends were for other kids. She remembers being invited to two parties. Ever. ‘I said no to both of them,’ she says, ‘and so the people I was half hanging around with to make it look like I had friends gave up on me. I wanted to get back home. That was my job. My ponies were waiting for me.
‘I rode my ponies before I went to school in the morning. I went to school and counted down the clock until it was over. When I got back from school in the winter when the nights closed in early, I had one of those lights on my head that cyclists wear to be seen in the dark and the ponies soon learned to follow the light through the woods.
‘I rode out of our drive and there was 50 metres of Tarmac on the road and then we were into the woods. And we have miles and miles of woods in Devon. That’s where I trained my show jumpers and my racing ponies. Often in the dark. We had about 20 in the string at one point. That was my life.
‘ Homework never happened. Detentions all the time, but I made sure they were in my lunch break. I didn’t really have friends. And I couldn’t go to the parties because I knew if I missed a day of training and they were racing on the weekend, they couldn’t win for me.
‘So what a lot of people think of as a normal child’s life didn’t exist for me. I lived and breathed my ponies and my horses. That’s the way I like to live my life. It’s my world. It’s what I love.’
A recent study conducted by academics at the University of Liverpool suggested female jockeys perform just as well as male jockeys on rides of a similar calibre and Frost sees racing as a meritocracy. She sees it as a sport where hard work brings its rewards. It is not about the jockey anyway, she says; it’s about the jockey, the horse, the trainer, the owner, the team.
Frost refuses to get dragged into a debate about opportunities for female jockeys compared with their male counterparts. It’s not that she’s being diplomatic. She is too open to be diplomatic. It is just that she doesn’t see racing that way. She says that it will take time for me to understand the way her mind works but one thing to understand fast is she has a horror of making excuses for herself. She acknowledges her debt to Nicholls and i s full of gratitude for the way he and his backers have shepherded her career. ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a jockey who has been successful without a main backer,’ she says. ‘ My main backer is Paul. I wouldn’t be winning these lovely races sat on beautiful horses if it wasn’t for him and the owners having belief in me and the faith of the team behind us.’
But alongside t he horror of excuses is a scorn for weakness. She was nine when she and her brother first laid out a line of hay
bales in a field and hurtled alongside them on a pony so they could practise falling off and not getting hurt. She was planning ahead even then.
When you have worked this hard, this long for something, why should you accept any restrictions just because you are a woman? Frost doesn’t. She progressed from being an amateur to a conditional jockey last summer. She doesn’t see barriers. She works for opportunities. It’s her mindset.
‘National Hunt racing is steeped in history,’ she says. ‘They used to call it “the sport of kings”. So
history creates opinions. They don’t mean they are facts. You don’t have to be ruled by them. You have to make sure that you are doing your best to be the best you can be and if it changes history and it changes facts and it changes opinions, then good for you.
‘I want to prove to myself that I’m going to be harder and I’m going to be stronger and I’m going to be better, and if any of that happens, then keep kicking, kid.
‘I don’t see myself as an individual. I don’t see my achievements as my own. I see it all as “we”. So whether that be boy or girl, you still have to work just as hard and prove a point and grab every opportunity you get. I’ve worked hard on making myself strong, making sure my head’s faster out there.
‘Of course, my path has been a little bit longer because I’m a girl. I’ve had to make sure I’m trying to be one step ahead. But I wouldn’t be anywhere without the support people have given me along my road and I wouldn’t change the road I’ve been on for the world. I am where I am because of what I’ve done.
‘We are all on a level playing field in this sport. Our pay is the same. Our weights are the same. Your hard work is getting on the good horses and getting the people behind you to support you.’
The rest of it, the riding and the racing, Frost doesn’t really see as work. Sometimes, jockeys lose their love of the sport when they start to gain success. Sometimes, they never really loved it in the first place. There is no sense of that about life. He always has a positive with her. There is only a feeling of look. You never see him grumpy. To a jockey who is relishing every step be associated with somebody like forward that she takes. The wonder that and to be his partner is just of it all is strong in her. awesome. He’s just great.’
‘When you get out there on to the Frost sits 28th in a jump jockeys’ track with your horse,’ she says, championship table led once again ‘it’s what you’ve known your whole by Richard Johnson and if others life. That’s your routine. It’s come harbour great ambitions for her, to you like the blood runs through she insists that it is not her dream your veins. It’s as simple as breatht o emulate Johnson and Tony ing. The hard work is done, trying McCoy by becming the champion to prove, whether you are boy or herself one day. It is not lack of girl, that you are good enough. confidence that makes her say it. It
‘What you are saying is: “Give me is a psychological device. the chance. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll ‘Becoming champion jockey isn’t make all the effort you have put in a goal,’ she says, ‘ because it’s for the last six months to get this uncontrollable. If it happens, it haphorse on this track worth it. I will pens, but I have a metaphor in my not mess it up. The last piece of the life and it’s that if you look at the jigsaw, I’ll make sure it fits for top of the mountain, it is a very you.” long way wa up so if you keep
‘I love establishing ga a taking takin a step forward partnership with a every eve time, where you horse. I used to run finish is where you fif as a kid and I used finish and well done to be all right but I for it. If you look at couldn’t cope with the top and don’t my nerves. I was get there, you’ve sick before and f ai l ed and t hat’s aft er every r ace r rubbish.’ because I was on my She cannot stop the own. accolades acc coming her
‘ But with my ponies ies way, nor halt the predicand now my horses, we’re tions ab about her future, nor together and I’m working for temper the excitement about them. It’s got nothing to do with me. those who would love her to become It’s his career so I don’t get nervthe face of a sport desperate to ous. It’s a weird concept and my widen its appeal. Not that she wants head, I think, is a lot different to to stop them, anyway. She is commany people in the world.’ fortable in her own skin and as far
She has won seven times out of from arrogant as it is possible to be eight riding Black Corton after so she is wide-eyed about her role yesterday’s victory at Ascot and as Jockey Club ambassador. she slips into a reverie when she ‘I’m doing what I am doing,’ she talks about him. says, ‘and if people want to run with
‘He’s the sort of person who’s a me, that’s awesome. If people want very little person,’ she says, ‘and he to join in with your excitement and was in the back and no one really the pride in your horse and what noticed him. he’s just achieved, it’s really cool.
‘We met each other in the summer ‘ I have no shadows so I’m not when we went round Worcester. I scared to say it how it is. I like to let was a baby and it was my first ride people in on my world. The more as a conditional. It’s important people who can come to the races when you start your career you and enjoy their time here, then it’s come out with a big bang and Paul a good thing. And whoever wants to and his owners made sure I got off run with me, I give time to everyon the right foot. So they put me on one because a lot of people have Black Corton and he went round given time to me.’ Worcester and he won.
‘To be a person like that who has been a little chap and then you’ve got to prove a point and now you’re a big gun, that takes something. And he knows he’s good now. He’s an absolute dude, the way he goes
Of course, my path has been longer because I’m a girl. I’ve had to make sure I’m trying to be one step ahead. But we are all on a level playing field in this sport