Hayley Turner: 'It was nice to step out of the bubble – I learned a lot about myself'

On her 41st birthday, we've republished this fantastic interview with top rider Hayley Turner from May 2018, when it was originally published for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers after she made her return from an early retirement. To read more great articles from our award-winning team of journalists, join Members' Club Ultimate here.

This article was first published in the Racing Post on May 19, 2018.

It is not so much the second coming as a coming of age. Hayley Turner is back, bursting with energy, loving the breeze in her face as she races down the track. This time, however, she will do it on her terms.

Two years out of the saddle has lent perspective to Turner, who swapped saddles for sofas towards the end of 2015. A place on the ITV Racing team was one of many new experiences for the most successful female jockey Britain has ever seen. Lessons have been learned, in particular that life is for living. In the previous 15 years there had been too much giving.

It’s a sobering thought that Turner, now 35, in effect rode herself into the ground. She was much feted, a pioneer in a deeply conservative orbit, the object of endless fascination with a media preoccupied by the seductive theme that she was a woman taking it to men on equal terms.

She seemed happy, often revelling in all the attention with her open demeanour and coquettish smile. She was the shy girl next door who blossomed into a highly marketable commodity. Yet inside, she felt empty and alone save for the family that has always propped her up.

“I’d got to the point where I’d wake up in the morning and dread going to work,” she reflects. “I was driving myself too hard, not enjoying it. Even on good days I got nothing out of it, so I told myself: ‘That’s it. I can’t do this anymore’.”

That’s on a professional level. But she was also emotionally bankrupt on a personal level. “I think people get bored of you,” she says. “They get sick of hearing about you: ‘Hayley’s done this, Hayley’s done that’. It was nice to step back from that and get out of the bubble. I learned a lot about myself. I’ve come back to it with a broader mind.”

Turner celebrates after riding Ripp Orf to win the Totescoop6 Victoria Cup at AscotCredit: Alan Crowhurst

More surprising than Turner’s frank testimony is that her malaise was self-inflicted. It was down to the expectation she placed on herself, an expectation born of what she felt was the minimum standard in her determination to please others.

“I'm enjoying it again because I’m not putting myself under any pressure this time,” she says. “Even if I get back to being as successful as I was, I won’t make that mistake a second time. The bottom line is that I don’t actually have to do anything.”

Fair play to her, yet success brings its own demands. The bubble is still there, waiting to envelop her again and suck all the air out. It’s easy to say that you’ll take things easier; not so easy to do when different trainers want you in different places on the same day.

Turner bridles politely at the suggestion before refuting it. “Early on, my agent told me about some rides were available but I have learned how to say no,” she says.

“In the past I would have ridden those horses but I could see they weren’t going to win, and travelling a long way to ride them wasn’t going to benefit me in the long term. Sometimes you’ll go somewhere for one ride even if it doesn’t really have a chance because you can see opportunity in the bigger picture.”

There is lament, if not regret, about how Turner shaped her early career. She was hypnotised by the possibilities once she started riding winners and writing headlines. The problem was that the chance to realise her dreams subsumed her to the point where she lost her own identity.

Only those who know her well will be aware that Turner, outwardly confident and self-assured, lives a little on her nerves. She is prone to self-doubt, which is why she sets such store on keeping those in her orbit happy.

“I wouldn’t say that the way I went about it first time round would be the right way for younger riders coming into racing,” she reflects. “Lots of people are more laid-back than me, they don’t put pressure on themselves. There’s a side to me that always wants to please, whereas now I’ve realised I’ve got to suit myself more.”

So determined is Turner to make a new start that she even appointed a new agent. Shashi Righton has taken over from Guy Jewell, who had served her well. “It was hard to tell Guy I was changing agents,” she says, “but I wanted to do everything new – right down to who was calling trainers on my behalf. I wanted to start afresh.”

The more Turner talks, the more it becomes apparent how discontented she had become. She has put her entire life through a form of self-therapy. What emerged at the end of it was a very different image of herself: she addresses questions with a frankness and sincerity she would have kept firmly under wraps in the past.

A mid-life-crisis-come-early, perhaps? That may be one aspect to it, although a more immediate concern was the relentless march of time. There will not be too many years left in the saddle. The time had come for her to participate in a way that made her happy. It would certainly be a travesty if her career, for all its impressive detail, had closed with her feeling resentful of a profession she had yearned to embrace from childhood.

Her newly discovered sense of perspective has opened her mind to what lies beyond racing’s narrow parameters. There is joy to be taken from simple things rather than descend into the recriminatory self-admonishment of watching endless reruns of a race forfeited by error. It has also helped her to become attuned to the frailties of human nature.

Turner has never been married, nor has she had a partner for the last six months. Is that a consequence of her professional lifestyle? “I think my taste in men probably has more to do with me being single than my job,” she says with a smile.

“I’m just not . . . I don’t know, actually. I’ve just not found anyone I want to spend the rest of my life with yet. I don’t rule it out just because I’m so busy working, but it’s not as much fun to have these victories without someone to share them with.”

Another potential dichotomy in the nature of her job is that she has constantly occupied a male-dominated environment. Has the territory required her to put a bit of the woman in her to one side for the sake of expediency? She ponders it for a while.

“Maybe, actually, now that you mention it,” she replies. “Maybe without me being aware of it. When I was at school I was always a bit of a tomboy, but in the two years I stopped riding I started making more of an effort. I certainly spend more time looking after myself. I even paint my nails now. It is flippin’ hard work – I’ve become high maintenance.”

In a relative sense, perhaps. But an even bigger statement about her shedding the dress-down shackles came when she posed for pictures before this newspaper’s photographer, Edward Whitaker. She was happy to dispense with riding gear for a dress that amplified her femininity. The images speak for themselves: a head-Turner, if you like.

She agrees, although she was a little apprehensive about the photos in advance. “I decided to put on a dress because that’s part of the way I feel about it this time round,” she says. “Why not? Life’s too short.”

That same sentiment came through after she watched a recording of her interview after she had won the Victoria Cup at Ascot eight days ago. “I thought I came across like an over-excited child,” she says.

“My first reaction was to say to myself: ‘Hayley, you need to calm down’. Then I thought: ‘Do you know what? No. What’s the point of putting the lid on things when you’re feeling good? Just enjoy it’.”

An early test of Turner’s resolve to do things differently arose soon after she resumed her career in France in October. She’d wanted to capitalise on the 2kg (4.4lb) allowance claimed by female jockeys in that country and had signed a retainer to ride for John Corbani, who has a sizeable string with Stephane Wattel, among others.

Turner with trainer Marcus Tregoning at Chepstow racecourse this weekCredit: Edward Whitaker

It was going well. Turner rode 15 winners over the next two months as she integrated with local jockeys ahead of a permanent move. She’d taken French lessons in advance to help her make a proper fist of it but she wasn’t sufficiently fluent to engage with other jockeys on frequent trips to the provinces. She could not join in the banter.

“I started looking for an apartment in Chantilly and that’s when I began to have second thoughts,” she says. “The French jockeys were very good to me. They tried to involve me in conversations but I missed out on a lot. The money is better in France, so is the lifestyle and there’s less travelling. But to be honest, I was getting a bit lonely. I didn’t want that.”

In the past she might have brazened it out for a while, pretended that all was well – or that it would soon be. Older and wiser now, she cut her losses quickly. “Instead of taking the money I decided to come back,” she says. “Do what makes you happy.”

Male journeymen jockeys in France have protested about the female riding allowance, although Turner says she detected no hint of resentment at her presence. She still opposes the principle of an allowance and has sympathy with male French counterparts whose rides are drying up in the face of the rising popularity of female jockeys.

“A blind eye has been turned to them,” she says. “They’re struggling, they have families to feed and they are good jockeys. There are other ways of going about it that are fairer.”

Turner believes female jockeys in Britain ride to a higher standard than their counterparts in France. “The horses here aren’t as easy to ride,” she maintains. “The way French horses are trained makes them more switched off, so girls here need to be physically stronger.

“I’d be interested to see the stats, but I’d guess that the records of girls in France would be better on the all-weather than on grass. Horses don’t need carrying around as much on the all-weather.

“You really have to be strong to hold a horse together on grass tracks, which have hills and bumps,” she says. “It’s the same in America. The tracks are flat; jockeys sit very quietly once they have got their horse going. That’s why girls do well there.”

For all that, Turner believes a female will one day win the jockeys’ championship in Britain. For either sex, the requisite qualities are durability, stamina and hard work, allied to the backing of a big stable.

“I do think a girl could do it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen in the near future,” she ventures. She recognises it would be a huge deal, particularly with the media, but she adds a caveat. “Being champion jockey doesn’t mean you are the best, does it? Winning big races is what really matters.”

Turner must have been asked such questions a thousand times, yet remains courteous in answering them. You sense, however, that debates like the true worth of female jockeys are part of the mix she was so keen to leave behind her.

Those two years out of the saddle were plainly a positive. In addition to her ITV Racing commitments she became a qualified fitness instructor. She worked out under the eye of Mike Edwards, the health and fitness coach at Notts County, a football club she now supports ardently.

Turner and Frankie Dettori in action for ITV Racing at DoncasterCredit: Edward Whitaker

Turner thought it would take time to re-establish herself, but winning the Victoria Cup aboard Ripp Orf paid immediate dividends. Four days later she was booked for four rides at Bath, riding a winner for Olly Murphy. She also rode a winner in between at Windsor, which gave her a deal of pleasure.

“My father and his girlfriend came to Windsor with me and we had a really nice day,” she says. “They’d never been before and they loved the atmosphere. They took pictures of the ferry boat on the river and later I thought to myself: ‘I've been coming here for years and never even noticed the boat’.

“I’ve ridden winners in places like South Africa, Japan and Mauritius. People say it must be wonderful to have been there, but all I saw was the airport and the weighing room. That’s such a shame. I want to make the most of these opportunities if they come again in the future.”

Hayley on . . .

Her OBE in 2016 It was the icing on the cake after I gave up riding. I had ridden winners for the Queen, so we’d had a few conversations before I was presented to her at Buckingham Palace. My nanna was very proud. I did feel guilty when I started riding again, but then you think about all the people who get married and don’t stay together for the rest of their lives. Time changes stuff, doesn’t it?

Turner was made an OBE in the Queen's birthday honours in 2016Credit: Stefan Rousseau

Her passion for boxing I love the intensity. Some years ago my sister and I went to Atlantic City to watch Carl Froch fight Andre Ward and we saw Kell Brook on the undercard. We’ve followed him ever since. I enjoy going to the York Hall (in Bethnal Green, London), where my sister and I stand out like sore thumbs among all the men. They are surprised when they find out that we actually know quite a bit about boxing.

Her three-month ban for betting From the word go I was completely honest about it. I put my hand up; it was just silly on my part. I was disappointed at the time, but I expected the ban. The offence had an entry point of 18 months, so it could have been worse. I don’t disagree with it and it’s all forgotten now.

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