Racing isn’t just about speed and style. Sometimes it is all about sheer guts. On trials day at Cheltenham, with the tacky ground sucking the life out of every leg, with every extra pound on a horse’s back feeling double on the lung-busting uphill drive to the post, courage mattered.
It was one of those heartening occasions too, so much more likely in jump racing, when smaller yards shared the spoils with the big boys. Not many in the Cheltenham crowd, I suspect, would vote left of centre. But racing crowds thrill nonetheless to a bit of redistribution of income and the victories of Joe Lively in the big race, the Letheby and Christopher Chase, and of The Sawyer in the Grade Three betchronicle.com Trophy were cheered to the echo.
Bob Buckler, whose Crewkerne yard has just 28 inhabitants, produced The Sawyer in perfect condition to take advantage of his light weight on heavy ground. He went into the lead after the seventh fence and though rider William Kennedy was working hard from three out he stayed on well, seeing off any who came to challenge with sheer tenacity. His beaming trainer declared, ‘I wouldn’t have dared to run him on good ground against this lot but he’s a happier horse if he’s out there in front doing his thing. He’ll fight anything that comes to him.’
And why is the horse still improving at nine? ‘Our horses are given time. They’re not abused early on.’ The advantage of a smaller yard is that the horses are treated as individuals. Of The Sawyer Bob Buckler says, ‘He’d be a lager lout. He enjoys life. But he’s a lovely character.’ As they say, any fool can get a horse fit, but it’s happy horses that win races.
When Joe Lively won the feature race jumping fans knew it was a family affair for the likeable father-son combination of jockey Joe Tizzard and trainer Colin. Owner Dickie Dimond, a former amateur rider himself, was Colin’s best man and Joe’s godfather and comes over to ride work on the horse. And many knew too that Joe was lucky even to be there after being scalped in the summer in a terrifying accident with a bailing machine.
Things haven’t all been easy for the tall former conditional champion, who lost his retainer as number two to the all-powerful Paul Nicholls yard. But he has now ridden Joe Lively, a bargain purchase as Ascot Sales for just 4,500 guineas, to nine victories in the 18 races they have contested together.
Like The Sawyer, Joe Lively made much of the running. He looked to have wrecked his chances two fences out when he skewed and landed sideways-on. As rider Joe put it, ‘The blunder would have stopped any other horse, but he got going again within ten or 12 strides.’ The dogged Joe Lively rallied at the last, caught the leader up the hill and stayed on strongly to win.
Said his jockey, ‘He’s only little but he is all heart. He’s been a very special horse for us, the flag-bearer for the yard these past two years.’ Father Colin, who epitomises the National Hunt spirit, is a farmer too with 250 acres of wheat and 250 cows. His brothers, he points out, have 1,000 cows. ‘I’d be a good farmer if I wasn’t messing around with horses.’
He will now run Joe Lively in the Gold Cup. It is theoretically above his class. But he has won four times in seven runs at Cheltenham. He knows it so well, says his rider, that he quickens at the top of the hill without being asked to. If it came up mud on the day he could just be a factor. But the race I would back him for is the Grand National.
The other example of courage on the Cheltenham card was the man who once tussled with Joe Tizzard for the conditional jockeys’ title. On a quality day without massive fields Seamus Durack had bookings for six out of seven races. Quite apart from his Betfair Chase victory earlier this season on Snoopy Loopy and 26 other winners this season, that was in itself confirmation that a jockey who has suffered a long period in the wilderness after a string of hideous injuries is back at the top table supping with the best of them.
When he broke his leg for the third time, dislocating his hip in the same fall, the limb was so badly damaged that Seamus saw it beside him and thought it belonged to someone else. After six operations he reckons he came back 18 months too early. The muscle, tendon and nerve damage was so bad that every ride was agony. He had the perfect excuse to give up but knew it would kill him if he didn’t make one more attempt to get to the top.
He doesn’t ask for sympathy. Indeed, I have never met a sportsman who is so self-critical. After the third break, he says, his balance was wrong, he was too reliant on one leg. ‘I was leaning too far up the neck. I was trying too hard, it was starting to wreck my head. I picked up bad habits, I couldn’t ride like Tony McCoy [his good friend], the way he locks his legs in and keeps his weight behind a horse.’
He never had a problem seeing a stride or having the nerve to drive a horse into a fence. Now he says, thanks to studying anatomy and adopting some dancing exercises, he has sorted out his physical problems. He is at last happy with his own body’s condition and it shows even in the way he walks across the paddock. Happy jockeys, too, get winners.
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