No rest for racing folk at Christmas, but festive spirit still prevails

While most people see Christmas as the party season or for spending time with loved ones, spare a thought for those who work in horse racing, where it is very much business as usual.

Like in any industry that involves animals, they need caring for 24/7. While most other walks of life get a couple of weeks off at the festive period, racing clicks into overdrive.

St Stephen's Day meetings in England and Ireland are some of the best-attended of the whole year, but it means life in a racing stable never stops.

“The best day Christmas can fall on for us is a Sunday, because that doesn’t dislodge the programme for the rest of the week,” said trainer Nicky Henderson.

“Of course, this year it is Wednesday! What we do is have half the staff on and half off, we want to give them as much time off as we can over Christmas.

“We tend to just do one lot on Christmas Day, which is everything that is running in the next 10 days, and then let them get away as soon as possible.

“We always have lots of part-time rider-outers who come and help us, we used to have Johnny Francome until he retired a few years ago. It’s all hands on deck, anyone who wants to ride out on Christmas Day is usually welcome, we put a Santa hat on them and off we go!

“They all have a little noggin and it’s great, we know we’ve just got to keep going, luckily all the declarations are done by then, which helps.

“It’s a lot easier now. I would normally say ‘in the good old days’, but it was the bad old days really when there were 14 meetings on Boxing Day, you wouldn’t know where you were sending them or who was riding them.”

Willie Mullins, champion trainer in Britain and Ireland last season, will have scores of runners at Leopardstown’s four-day fixture, as well as entries at Limerick and Kempton Park.

“Christmas Day is usually great fun,” he said. “We get a lot of people, ex-staff, friends of ours, to come in and ride out. People arrive in Santa suits and it’s usually a bit of fun.

“We have to get all the runners out for the week and that is usually a lot of horses.

“In racing, you are just brought up that way, it’s like if you are a farmer, you have to get up and milk the cows or whatever, it’s just part of life.

“If you are an actor or whatever doing a pantomime, you are going to miss out as well. Everyone just sets their own life and we’re lucky to be in it.

“At times like Christmas, you could think ‘I’d love to be doing what all the other guys are doing downtown enjoying Christmas for the week’, but I think it balances out hugely in our favour over the whole year. We’re all blessed to be in racing and people who are in it, love it.

“If you are not that way inclined, that is different, but we know it’s a seven-days-a-week job and we get our ups and downs.”

Dan Skelton also insisted his staff are happy to make the best of things, while still keeping busy.

He said: “All the horses go out early and then I’d say 80 per cent of the staff go home, 20 per cent stick around.

“Some of them have lunch together at the yard and one of our owners, Rachel, she lives literally just down the road, half a mile down the road, I think she’s taking in eight or 10 this year for lunch.

“So it’s a working time of year for us all, but it’s still a very special time of year. You look forward to spending time with family, opening presents, having a bit of lunch, but then I’ll be looking at the next day’s racing. It’s a great time of year and I prefer to be busy anyway.”

Weighing-room stalwart Daryl Jacob, who has ridden over 1,000 winners and is due to retire at the end of the season, said: “I’m lucky now, I used to have to go and ride out, but not anymore. Christmas is all about my kids now.

“My wife Kelly will do the dinner, it all depends on what weight I’ve got to do. Sometimes we can have Christmas dinner a day or two before, depending on what weight I have on Boxing Day.

“From 5pm, I’ll be in the gym for 40 minutes and then I’ll have over an hour in the bath and get the kids to bed before I start looking at the form.

“The last few years I’ve been over to Ireland on Boxing Day, which means a 6am flight, but these days Christmas Day revolves around the kids and my family.”

Former jockey Andrew Thornton, now a presenter on Sky Sports Racing and ITV, has fond memories of when he first worked in a yard over Christmas.

“When I started out at WA’s (Arthur Stephenson’s) everybody would be in Christmas Day, but we’d be finished by 10.30am and he’d have everyone into the house for a drink in his living room,” said Thornton.

“You see a few yards these days working in fancy dress on Christmas Day to make it fun. At the end of the day, working in yards is fun, you can still have fun and work.

“When I moved down to Kim Bailey’s, I’d work there Christmas morning and then travel back up north late morning to be home for Christmas Day. It didn’t matter where I was riding on Boxing Day.”

Gavin Cromwell won the 2017 delayed Welsh National with Raz De Maree, but a year earlier he had to ask one member of staff to take the same horse over to Chepstow with the prospect of him missing the cut. So not only would that be Christmas spent in a racecourse stable, you would not have even got to see your horse run.

“It’s obviously a busy time for us, but you know it will be,” said Cromwell.

“The difficulty for us comes if we have a runner at Chepstow on the 27th. It’s only 24-hour declarations and you might have one that isn’t guaranteed a run, but you have to send someone over with the horse in any case and then they might not get in and they are away for the whole of Christmas! It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.”

For long-standing Kempton clerk of the course Barney Clifford, working Christmas Day is all he has ever known.

“Christmas Day for me entails seeing my wife and kids before heading to Kempton, seeing to the overnighters, making sure they are all OK, updating the going report and just making sure everything is OK before I go home for lunch with my family,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a Christmas Day off, I was brought up on a dairy farm before I was a jockey and then I became a clerk.

“It comes with the territory, anything that involves animals, you never get a day off. Whether it’s a dog or a horse, it makes no difference.”