John Ingles looks at some of the ups and downs in the career of the dual champion amateur David Maxwell, who competed against the top professionals and occasionally beat them.
‘…made a successful debut over fences after seven months off, promising more to come in this sphere even if he did have the run of the race under an owner-rider who may have a style of his own but whose enthusiasm is unmatched and for whom this was a landmark seventy-fifth success and hence the end of his claim…’
The winner in question in the above Timeform report on a novices’ handicap chase at Taunton last November was In d’Or, but more importantly the enthusiastic owner reaching his milestone was Mr David Maxwell whose career as an amateur rider under Rules had begun some 15 years earlier. In d’Or, pictured following up at Ascot, was also one of Maxwell’s two rides at Cheltenham in March – they finished sixth in the first running of the National Hunt Chase since the former amateurs’ race was opened to professionals. But those rides proved to be Maxwell’s last at the Festival as the 47-year-old has reluctantly announced his retirement as a consequence of his latest back injury sustained in a fall at Aintree in the spring.
Riding in his red colours with the brown sleeves and cap, Maxwell brought something a little different to the races he contested. Rather than an accomplished amateur in the mould of a Patrick Mullins or Sam Waley-Cohen, Maxwell followed more in the tradition of less polished but more colourful riders of the past such as the Duke of Alburquerque or Brod Munro-Wilson.
Mullins’ victory on Nick Rockett in the latest Grand National came just three years after Waley-Cohen was successful on Noble Yeats in the final ride of a career which had also brought him success in the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Long Run.
The Duke of Alburquerque had some less happy experiences at Aintree pursuing a childhood dream to win the Grand National, the Spanish nobleman sustaining a catalogue of injuries over the years and ending up on more than one occasion in Liverpool’s Walton Hospital. His one completion from seven attempts came on Nereo, a horse he had bred himself, who finished eighth behind Red Rum in 1974. That was more than 20 years after the Duke’s first ride in the Grand National. Aged 55 by then, in the weeks preceding the ride on Nereo he had had 16 screws removed having recovered from a badly broken leg but sustained a fresh injury just a week beforehand when breaking his collarbone.
The Duke reportedly said afterwards that he had ridden Nereo ‘like a sack of potatoes’ but vowed to be back for another try. That, however, resulted in a serious fall two years later which left him with seven broken ribs, two broken vertebrae, a broken thigh and put him in a coma for two days. Nereo ran twice more in the Grand National, but he did so without his owner on board who was no longer deemed fit to take part.
While Maxwell ended up on the floor in the last two editions of the Foxhunters’ at Aintree, he too sustaining broken vertebrae in his latest spill at The Chair, his record over the big fences was largely a sound one, even if he didn’t manage a win. Most notably, he got round in his only Grand National attempt, for example, finishing sixth on 40/1-shot Ain’t That A Shame in 2024. As Maxwell proudly, but with tongue firmly in cheek, pointed out, the same horse had been the last of 17 finishers under Rachael Blackmore the year before.
Maxwell went closer to winning the Foxhunters’ at Aintree more than once, coming third on Mendip Express and Road To Riches and then being placed twice on Cat Tiger who was third in 2021 and runner-up a year later, threatening to fare better still on both occasions. Earlier in his career, the same horse had provided Maxwell with one of his biggest wins just days after being purchased in France, the source of many of his winners. Maxwell was unseated from Cat Tiger at the practice hurdle before the Prix Morgex at Auteuil, but in the race itself the partnership remained intact with Maxwell recording a Group 3 win against some of the top French jockeys. Four of Maxwell’s career total of 80 wins were gained in France.
And so to merchant banker Brod Munro-Wilson who will be best remembered for his association with The Drunken Duck, one of his two Grand Military Gold Cup winners, who won a thrilling edition of the 1982 Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham when rallying to get back up by a head after making most of the running.
The best description of Munro-Wilson’s upright riding style was surely the comparison with someone trying to fold a deckchair in a gale, though Timeform’s appraisal of him was strikingly similar to that quoted above about Maxwell over 40 years later:
‘The Drunken Duck’s owner-rider embodies the spirit of the National Hunt amateur almost to the letter and anything he lacks in style he certainly tries to make up for in enthusiasm – O’Neill or Scudamore couldn’t have shown more endeavour on The Drunken Duck at Cheltenham.’
Maxwell never won the Foxhunter but he was placed twice on Shantou Flyer, finishing second in 2019 and third a year later after leading briefly early in the straight. Away from the Festival, Maxwell did ride two winners at Cheltenham, completing a five-timer on Jatiluwih in a handicap hurdle in November 2019 and landing a similar event on Dolphin Square – one of his ten wins on that horse - on New Year’s Day in 2022. Both of those were trained by Philip Hobbs who, along with Paul Nicholls, supplied the majority of Maxwell’s winners and helped him towards his two champion amateur titles in 2018/19 and 2019/20.
But while success in either of the big hunter chases at Cheltenham and Aintree eluded him, Maxwell had better luck at Punchestown. He had already gone close in the Champion Hunters Chase in 2017 when beaten a neck on Mendip Express, but four years later went one better on Bob And Co who had unseated future champion Sean Bowen in that year’s Foxhunter, the season covid restrictions prevented amateurs from competing at Cheltenham.
Maxwell’s success at Punchestown must have been all the sweeter for beating none other than Patrick Mullins in a photo – the verdict was a nose – on favourite Billaway. All the more so too, as just 12 days earlier he had fallen off Shantou Flyer when looking a certain winner at Wincanton. He might have felt, too, that Bob And Co owed him that after an inauspicious British debut at Warwick earlier that year when Bob And Co proved virtually unrideable, taking such a strong hold that Maxwell, suffering from cramp, was forced to pull him up.
For all the mishaps, though, that punctuated and eventually ended his career in the saddle, Maxwell enjoyed, in the truest sense of the word, a career that few amateurs can experience in other sports, competing against the top professionals and occasionally beating them.
It needs acknowledging, too, that it took a great deal of investment to do so, and while, unlike earlier ‘Corinthians’, Maxwell had to deal with the sort of abuse that comes from competing in the social media age and from which even the top professionals aren’t immune, his self-deprecating humour when it came to his shortcomings in the saddle proved a good antidote for the most part. It’s over a hundred years now since an amateur was last champion jumps jockey in Britain, but hopefully the era of those who compete for the thrill of it and have brought some colour to an increasingly sanitised sport hasn’t ended just yet.
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