As a general rule, jockeys who finish fifth in a seven-runner race get a clear run back to the weighing room but not Bryony Frost. Having started the year with almost no profile, she ends it as one of jump racing’s most popular young talents, judging by the number of autographs she was asked to sign on returning from a low-key handicap hurdle at Newbury.
Other riders overtook her on the walk back, men with many more wins to their names but a less approachable set to their faces. Frost chatted with the teenagers handing her racecards and pens, asking what they got for Christmas.
None of their presents can match what she got on Boxing Day, when she landed the Kauto Star Novice Chase on Black Corton, making her only the second female jockey in Britain or Ireland to win a top-class race over obstacles. It was a giddy, scarcely-to-be-hoped-for climax to a year in which she won the Foxhunters at the Cheltenham Festival before turning professional and enjoying continued success.
Those who hope for more from the 22-year-old will surely be encouraged to learn that she kept a sensible lid on the post-race celebrations. “I had a glass of Coke, gave everyone massive hugs and kicked on home, in bed by nine o’clock,” she recalls, but this does not mean she was unmoved by the achievement, or her rapid elevation from amateur status.
“It was cool to be out on Boxing Day at Kempton. Three rides I had, that day. It’s mad to think, this weekend last year, I would have been at a point-to-point. Absolutely bonkers. It’s an honour and I hope I can keep making the results and paying back the faith.”
With the backing of a powerhouse trainer in Paul Nicholls, Frost clearly has a big chance of further success, perhaps at March’s Cheltenham Festival, where she expects to partner Black Corton in the RSA Chase. Nicholls is reliably plain-speaking in his assessment of jockeys, so it was interesting, earlier this month, to hear him praising Frost immediately after a race in which she was beaten.
The connection apparently had much to do with Nicholls’s daughter, Megan, who was pony racing and riding in point-to-points at the same time as Frost. “She said they needed someone who could dedicate themselves to her pointers and it just so happened to be me. I was a very wobbly baby at that point, God knows how they saw any sort of light in me at that stage of my career, but she put me up on her pointers and we got winners.”
What the Nicholls family saw, surely, was someone who had always lived and breathed horses. Frost’s father, Jimmy, won a Grand National on Little Polveir before she was born. Hadden, one of her brothers, rode a Festival winner. “I don’t know how far racing goes back in our history because I don’t actually know much about our history,” she says. “I just know there’s a lot of very, very old-looking photos of people I would have never met, on horses.
“I bought my first pony at eight for £800. I had my first pony race at nine and away I went. I pony-raced and pointed on the same day on my 16th birthday. I didn’t quite have the superstar ponies because I sold them before that. My life was producing young horses and I used to love seeing them blossom and passing them over to somebody who took them on even further. It was really cool, seeing a young character progress and become somebody.
“Some people would say, when I first came up through the ranks, ‘Well, she’s only just turned professional, she is not ready for this,’ but they haven’t seen me from nine-years-old, coming all the way up.”
Frost’s mother apparently wanted a ballet-dancing, dress-wearing girl but found her third child was more boyish than her elder brothers. Now, when the question of gender difference is raised, Frost responds with a cheery: “Feel my biceps!” She will by no means concede that male jockeys have a strength advantage.
“A lot of it is technique. Jeez, we wouldn’t be able to hold a static weight like a rugby player would, none of us in there. The rugby players wouldn’t be able to hold a horse like we can. It’s technique, not strength. A lot of it is to do with balance.
“Do you think we can get half a tonne of animal, who is pretty much independently thinking, to go faster than he wants to, through strength? No. He is gonna go as fast as his body allows him. Our job is to be able to keep the rhythm, to keep him moving forward, try and get him breathing in time with his stride.
“It’s the little things, it’s like playing with a cobweb on their mouths sometimes, the way that your fingers are working on the reins. I like to try and get into the way of their thinking and sometimes you have to get to know them very fast, just going down to the start. But once you’ve been in it long enough, it’s as easy as reading a human, whether you’re going to get on or not.”
Touching wood, Frost says she has been lucky with injuries, but, in horsey circles, this is a relative concept. “When I was 15, schooling at home, I had a bad fall and damaged a membrane round my kidney, put me in hospital for a month or two. Nothing too bad. It gave me a chance to lose a bit of my puppy fat and start really building up my core strength. That was a good opportunity, otherwise I’d probably still have a bit of puppy fat on me now.”
Fergal O’Brien’s first Grade One
One of jump racing’s emergent talents had a milestone moment here when Fergal O’Brien achieved the first Grade One success of his training career, Poetic Rhythm slogging to glory in the Challow Hurdle. On an attritional surface that ensured each finisher was exhausted, the chestnut showed bravery to reel in the enterprisingly ridden Mulcahys Hill and then withstand the runner-up’s rally that closed the margin to a short-head.
“Over the moon,” said the Naunton-based O’Brien, who shares gallops with Nigel Twiston-Davies. “I had one run not so well at Haydock and one or two have been quiet but when the chips are down, you want George [the stable’s nickname for the winner] on your side.”
It was not merely in his winning effort that Poetic Rhythm showed courage. He was returning to action after a serious illness, having had colic at the start of the month, and was tackling a much softer surface than he generally faces. O’Brien’s instinct had been to run his mudlover Global Stage here but Paddy Brennan, the winning jockey, suggested Poetic Rhythm would be a better bet.
Indeed, Brennan appears to have been choosing the races for this horse all along and O’Brien cheerily credited the veteran rider with being “a big part of the whole thing. There’s no one here to see him do that,” the trainer added, pointing to where the jockey was tending to the horse and chatting to his groom. “And he was in on Christmas morning, riding out. You’re very lucky to have him.”
Having said Poetic Rhythm would run next in the Albert Bartlett at the Cheltenham Festival, O’Brien called over to Brennan for confirmation. “Straight there!” the jockey called back.
No new clues were offered as to why Faugheen may have flopped so badly in Ireland on Friday and it is expected that Willie Mullins and other connections may take a few days before commenting further. Nicky Henderson, whose Buveur D’Air is now odds-on for the Champion Hurdle, said he had sent a consolatory text to Faugheen’s owner, Rich Ricci, and added that there was plenty of time for the other horse to come right in time for a clash at Cheltenham. However, he also agreed with a suggestion that Mullins’s Yorkhill could very well be diverted to the Champion Hurdle after a disappointing run over fences during the week.
Meanwhile, Joe Tizzard said a Gold Cup challenge had been ruled out for Fox Norton, who was beaten a long way out in the King George on Boxing Day. However, he felt Thistlecrack’s effort to be fourth in that race suggested the horse still has a live chance in the Gold Cup.
“I was chuffed to bits with him and we’re getting there,” Tizzard said of Thistlecrack. “It was a good, strong run. If he hadn’t clouted two-out, he might have been close to being second. He was a tired horse the next day, he was laid down in his stable when I fed him.
“We haven’t decided yet what we’re going to do. We’d quite like to get another run into him because obviously he’s only had the two but whether one comes too soon, we’ll have to decide. It’s early days but a lovely step forward.
“The way he travelled and the way he jumped was the nice part. He certainly looked like the Thistlecrack of old. We’d been disappointed with his run here [four weeks ago] but a lot more pleased with him at Kempton.”
Chris Cook’s tips for Sunday
Lingfield
11.40 Captain Pugwash 12.10 Renny’s Lady 12.40 Ojala 1.15 Celestial Spheres 1.45 Cliffs Of Capri 2.15 Bernie’s Boy 2.50 Gold Club 3.20 Waneen
Uttoxeter
12.20 Aza Run 12.50 Juge Et Parti 1.25 Ben Arthur 1.55 Cave Top 2.25 No Dice 3.00 Mozo 3.30 Shapiro
Warwick
12.30 Tennewrow 1.00 Waldorf Salad (nap) 1.35 Le Rocher 2.05 Culture De Sivola (nb) 2.35 Very Live 3.10 Colt Lightning 3.40 Mr Washington