John Ingles looks at some of the notable Flat jockeys who have competed at Cheltenham over the years.
The list of successful riders at Cheltenham this week was headed for the fifth successive year by Paul Townend, with plenty of other familiar names in the jump jockey ranks tasting success too. But the odd one out, as it were, was Colin Keane whose Flat-riding skills were seen to good effect when getting the better of his jumping colleagues in Wednesday’s Champion Bumper aboard The Mourne Rambler for Noel Meade (replay below). Ireland’s six-time champion Flat jockey will soon be back in more familiar territory riding in top races on the Flat for his bosses Juddmonte who appointed him as their retained rider last summer.
Formerly stable jockey to Ger Lyons, Keane has ridden more winners for Meade than for any other trainer bar Lyons, their biggest success on the Flat coming in 2021 when Helvic Dream won the Tattersalls Gold Cup. Helvic Dream was in action himself at Cheltenham this week, incidentally, finishing mid-division in the County Hurdle under Donagh Meyler.
‘People were slagging me for booking Colin and saying that those Flat jockeys will get killed in this race’, reported Meade afterwards, ‘but I told them this is no Flat jockey, he’s different class. They won’t frighten this champion.’ So it proved, Keane being well used to holding his own in big fields on the level and compared his Cheltenham experience to being ‘like the first two furlongs of a Topaz Mile around Galway!’ He described the opportunity just to ride at the Festival as a bucket-list thing to tick off, and that ‘when Noel rang me two weeks ago, it was an easy ‘yes’ [to agree to the ride] if I could get the licence sorted’.
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It might be a rare occurrence for a top Flat jockey to ride at the Festival these days, but there’s a long tradition of Irish jockeys in particular switching between codes and having success at Cheltenham, going back to the likes of Martin Molony just after the Second World War. Regarded by many as the greatest dual-purpose jockey, Molony was riding at a time when Irish championships – he was champion six times - were decided by combined wins on the Flat and over jumps. His versatility was highlighted by his achievements in the spring of 1951 when he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Silver Fame and the Irish 2000 Guineas on Signal Box who he then partnered to finish third in the Derby.
Lester Piggott was from a family of jump jockeys on his father’s side - his father Keith won the 1939 Champion Hurdle on African Sister – and with his weight increasing as he grew during his teens, he was finding it increasingly difficult to ride light enough in Flat races. As a result, Piggott’s rides over hurdles brought him a win at the Cheltenham Festival or National Hunt Meeting as it was then known. It came in 1954 in what was then the opening race of the fixture, the Birdlip Selling Hurdle, on Mull Sack trained by his father. Piggott recalls in his autobiography riding a winner at Worcester the day before and then stopping on the way home to walk the course at Cheltenham, darkness having fallen by the time they made their way up the hill.
Days after winning the long-gone Birdlip Hurdle, Piggott also won the Triumph Hurdle (on Prince Charlemagne who’d been his Derby mount the year before), though in those days that race was run at Hurst Park rather than Cheltenham. Of course, Piggott’s future lay back on the Flat and he won his first Derby later the same year on Never Say Die, but he described hurdle racing as ‘fun’ and recalled riding ‘with some of the all-time greats of the game – including Bryan Marshall, Fred Winter, Tim Molony [Martin’s brother] and Dick Francis – and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.’
More recently, another future champion Flat jockey with a Champion Hurdle-winning father had more opportunities at the Festival. Richard Hughes, whose father Dessie partnered Monksfield to his first Champion Hurdle victory in 1979 and then trained the 2004 and 2005 winner Hardy Eustace, didn’t win at the Festival himself but went closest on the Mouse Morris-trained favourite His Song who finished runner-up in the 1998 Supreme Novices’. The previous season, Hughes had finished third on Daraydan, who he’d won with at Cheltenham earlier that season, in Istabraq’s Royal & SunAlliance Novices’ Hurdle and filled the same position on Paddy’s Return in the Stayers’ Hurdle.
Johnny Murtagh, with three Irish Flat championships already under his belt, went closer still to winning the Stayers’ Hurdle aboard the Michael Halford-trained Golden Cross in 2006, having won the Derby for the third time the year before on Motivator. Like Piggott, Murtagh turned his attention briefly to hurdles at a time when his weight was making life more difficult on the Flat. Murtagh had won the November Handicap at Leopardstown on Golden Cross and maintained the partnership in his four subsequent starts over hurdles.
After being beaten a short head in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle and finishing third in the Irish Champion Hurdle, the partnership went to the Festival on the back of an odds-on success in the Boyne Hurdle at Navan. Murtagh had reportedly said before Cheltenham that he would ‘ride the boots off these jump jockeys’, and while he had the likes of Richard Johnson, Tony McCoy and Ruby Walsh not far behind him, Robert Thornton on My Way de Solzen was to make sure that wasn’t entirely the case.
Disputing the lead with that rival jumping the last, Golden Cross wandered under pressure but once straightened up stayed on strongly and failed by only a head to peg back Thornton’s mount, despite getting carried right as the winner began to hang. ‘I’ve not felt so sick in a long time’ said Murtagh afterwards. ‘I thought I had it – I jumped the last well and really thought this horse was going to win.’
One of Keane’s big rivals in Ireland, Pat Smullen, preceded him by having five rides in the Champion Bumper over the years for his boss Dermot Weld. Smullen’s best placing was when third on Rite of Passage in 2009 before going on to win the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot on the same horse the following year.
But Keane isn’t alone among Flat jockeys to have won the Champion Bumper. Jamie Spencer was successful 24 years ago on Pizarro for Edward O’Grady.
Spencer was another Flat jockey with a Champion Hurdle-winning father as George Spencer had trained the 1963 winner Winning Fair. Pizarro had to survive a stewards’ enquiry as he had only a neck to spare in a controversial finish over the heavily-backed favourite Rhinestone Cowboy, ridden by Norman Williamson. Hanging right despite Spencer doing all he could to keep his mount straight, Pizarro twice impeded Rhinestone Cowboy on the run-in, and plenty believed the placings would be amended. There were clearly no hard feelings on the part of the owner of the runner-up, Sue Magnier, nor husband John, as ironically Spencer won the following year’s St Leger in the same colours on Brian Boru and soon became Ballydoyle stable jockey.
That wasn’t Spencer’s only ride in the Champion Bumper, and the 2005 renewal of that race had quite a strong Flat flavour. Besides Spencer and Hughes, Graham Lee, who was the leading jockey at the Festival that year with three winners and would switch to riding on the Flat seven years later, also had a ride in the race but so too did Spencer’s successor at Balldoyle, Kieren Fallon, who finished fourth on Michael Tabor’s mare Refinement, trained by Jonjo O’Neill.
Incidentally, another Irish Flat champion, Donnacha O’Brien, finished eighth on Refinement’s son Meticulous in the 2019 Champion Bumper. He was trained by older brother Joseph who had himself finished down the field in the same race seven years earlier riding Shield trained by their father Aidan.
So, who might the next Flat jockey be to get a ride in the Champion Bumper? Oisin Murphy, whose uncle Jim Culloty won it in 2004 on Total Enjoyment, has certainly expressed an interest in the past and even took out a jumps licence in 2023 in the hope of getting a ride. ‘I grew up in a National Hunt racing family and possibly at some time it would be a dream come true to get the chance to do it,’ Murphy said at the time.
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