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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Bentley beauty

Alan Judd goes Motoring

When I saw Robert at Kempton last Saturday it was hardly an auspicious moment. His first race ride for Brian Meehan, Once Upon a Grace, reared up in the stalls and had to be withdrawn. Of his other two mounts just one, Meehan’s Bailey, made the frame. When the gelding failed to quicken a furlong out many jockeys would have accepted defeat. But Winston kept on pumping and snatched third place on the line with the ride of a determined man.

He is good enough any day for Brian Meehan who says, ‘You employ a jockey to do a job and you can depend on him to do it. He’s very strong.’ Robert is riding work for top yards like those of Mark Johnston in Middleham and Sir Michael Stoute in Newmarket, aware that they have their own first-call riders but hopeful of picking up those good spare rides which will help him back towards the big time.

Robert Winston’s racing life started by racing ponies bareback round burned-out cars on the council estates of Finglas, near Dublin. After starting in Ireland at 16, he moved to ride for Richard Fahey in Malton, where he soon caught the eye as an apprentice on The Butterwick Kid, beating a certain Pat Eddery by a neck. He became champion apprentice and cannot praise Fahey too highly for his loyalty to the young jockeys he brings on. ‘If you put the work in there you’ll get the rewards.’ Then there were spells riding for Tim Easterby and Lynda Ramsden, whose husband Jack helped him to broaden his experience riding in America for Richard Mandela. ‘He is an absolute legend. He taught me so much about timing, pace, switching leads, the lot.’

What I had forgotten, like many, was that the horrific fall at Ayr was not the first time he had broken his jaw in a riding accident. In an earlier spill at Haydock when both reins snapped he ‘went out of the back’ and was kicked by following horses. That was three months out and the first time the drink took hold. He had worked himself out of that but by the time the Ayr accident happened was finding his out-of-racing life hard to handle. ‘Everything seemed to catch up with me.’ He dropped his hands carelessly in a finish, losing a race he should have won. ‘My head was wrecked and I had to stop riding for a while.’

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