John Francome: 'If it hadn't been for him, I'd be cleaning cars or in prison or doing something completely different'

This interview with legendary jockey John Francome was first published in February as part of our popular The Horses Who Made Me series.

The series returned on Monday evening with Chris Cook interviewing Gold Cup and Grand National-winning champion jockey Richard Dunwoody and will continue with new instalments published every Monday evening for online Racing Post Members' Club subscribers and in Tuesday's newspaper.

• Richard Dunwoody: 'It took us a while to get it right - and if it had been any other trainer, or nowadays, I'd have been replaced'  
  

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John Francome gives me a line to set the mind racing: "There was only one horse that made me.”

Just one horse from that great career! Does he mean Burrough Hill Lad or Wayward Lad, Sea Pigeon maybe?

No, those came towards the end of his time in the saddle, it would have to be something earlier. Bula or Lanzarote perhaps? I've got it; he must mean Pengrail, his Sun Alliance Chase winner from 1975, the season before he first became champion jockey?

Osbaldeston is the answer, unexpected if, like me, you were expecting the conversation to focus on well-remembered stars of 1970s jump racing. Francome, of course, remembers what it was like before he was famed for his horsemanship, when, like any other jockey, he needed that first chance on a reasonably willing, halfway-talented animal in order to prove he could do the job.

Surely his talent would have shone through? Before he rode his first winner, he was already an accomplished showjumper and had won the Young Riders' Championship of Great Britain at Hickstead. Was it not clear from an early stage that he was going to make it?

Evidently not. Fred Winter's Uplands Stables in Lambourn was not short of jockeys. Paul Kelleway and Richard Pitman were at the top of the pecking order, Vic Soane had been getting chances and Francome, on arrival, was in the mix with three other young, similarly inexperienced hopefuls. Although he won on his first ride, nothing happened quickly and by the spring of 1970 he was feeling frustrated.

"I was 17, I'd been working at Fred's for a year and I was getting heavy, I wasn't going anywhere,” explains Francome. “I was fed up with working and there being no future to it. I phoned my mum and dad up and said, ‘I'll be home at the weekend, I've had enough of it’. They said, ‘Fine’.

"I went down to tell Fred and he wasn't there." Who knows what was keeping Winter away from his office at that moment but, whatever it was, it had an enormous impact on the sport's next 15 years. A great career could have sunk before leaving the harbour if the fourth-ranking jockey at Uplands had been able to hand in his notice as intended.

Fred Winter (left) with John Francome on Lambourn Downs in 1979Credit: Gerry Cranham

"The next morning, I was down to ride Osbaldeston schooling. He was a bit of a tearaway . . . well, he was very much a tearaway. And he jumped really good that day, which he didn't normally."

Osbaldeston's appearances on the schooling grounds had been a source of idle entertainment for onlookers, as he generally carted his protesting rider halfway to Wantage after clearing the last of the fences. Not this time.

"He settled quite well, for him. Fred said, 'He's in a boys' race at Worcester next week, you can ride him'. So I told Mum and Dad that I'd wait for another week and see what happened."

Two previous tilts at fences had ended with falls for Osbaldeston but this time he remained upright and won comfortably, but for which there would be no story to tell and no seven-time champion to tell it.

"I just got the key to getting him jumping,” says Francome. "If you could bear to sit still on him and go with him when you could see he was right, he was fine. In the end, he turned out to be a really good jumper, very, very quick and very athletic.

"He was such a tearaway I remember riding him in a double-bridle one day at Fontwell, completely unheard of, but you'd try anything to get him settled. He was last of 14 runners as we turned to go down the hill to jump the first fence and he jumped it two lengths in front. He literally bolted.

"That was him. He ran a really good race one day at Sandown, I thought I was going to beat Tingle Creek. Getting plenty of weight, albeit. He was a really fast jumper. It was a thrill.

"Tingle Creek used to jump left-handed and I said to Fred, ‘If I can get close enough at the last, he might cross me and we'll get it in the stewards' room’. Anyway, I didn't get close enough but he was very good."

Osbaldeston and Francome eventually won a total of 17 races together but none mattered as much as the first, which renewed the jockey's taste for success and, combined with another victory on the same horse next time out, dissuaded him from throwing in the towel just yet.

"There's absolutely no doubt that, if it hadn't been for him, I'd be cleaning cars or in prison or doing something completely different. Without him, I would have just packed up. He was the one that got me going."

Sonny Somers: almost identical to his stablemate Osbaldeston

Osbaldeston had an almost identical brother in the yard, Sonny Somers, who will be remembered by some for his extraordinary durability; his final wins over fences came at the age of 18. He was another early source of success for Francome.

"They were absolutely identical, except that Sonny Somers had a tiny, little wart just up the top by his tail. But Osbaldeston wanted two miles on hard ground and the other wanted three miles on soft ground.

"If they'd been in another yard, someone might have been having a fiddle with them, because there were no microchips in those days and you couldn't tell them apart. But not at Fred Winter's, everything was done by the book.

"He was a proper old character, even when he was 18. He would jig-jog all the way to the gallops and all the way home, he was the most horrible ride but extraordinary, one of those horses that just had boundless energy."

The likes of Osbaldeston and Sonny Somers might not be everyone's idea of a fun ride but Francome points out that there can be a considerable upside to a scary experience.

"Every now and again, you need a horse to run away with you,” he says. “You can very easily forget how much scope they've got and what they can jump.

"I see quite a few jockeys who are always looking for a short stride. Every now and again, you need something to run off with you and you think, ‘f**k me, I'd forgotten just what a horse is capable of’.

"The trick is finding a happy medium because if they're standing off all the way round in a race, they're taking up too much energy. The likes of Harry Cobden, Bryony Frost and Rachael Blackmore, they just have it."

In those days, a jockey was obliged to learn what he could from each horse and each taste of race-riding.

"Nobody ever gave you any advice. There were no jockey coaches or anything. The only thing Fred ever said to me was, 'Make sure you can use your whip in both hands'. He'd be appalled if he saw most jockeys riding today.

"When I went to Uplands, Paul Kelleway was first jockey. He knew more about riding and horses than anybody else, he was an absolute genius. He was not a good rider but he knew what you should do. He said to me, 'When you get to a fence, you need to be getting lower'. Which was something he could never do but I found it easy because I'd been showjumping.

"He was a big help and so was Richard Pitman, he used to take me everywhere with him. He got me going with Ken Cundell, Richard Head and countless other trainers. Completely unselfish, but he knew I wouldn't ever be saying I should ride that horse, if it was his ride."

Burrough Hill Lad and John Francome on the way to victory in the 1984 Hennessy Cognac Gold CupCredit: Gerry Cranham

It seems a good idea to mention some horses whose names are closely associated with Francome's. There was Burrough Hill Lad, of course, on whom he won a King George and a Welsh Grand National, although he had to ride Brown Chamberlin into second place for Winter when Burrough Hill Lad got his Gold Cup in 1984.

"He wasn't a very good jumper when he started but he ended up being very good. Brilliantly trained by Jenny Pitman. When you look back to see how few horses she trained and what races she won, she was absolutely as good as there was."

Burrough Hill Lad was notoriously hard to keep sound. Did that play on Francome's mind during a race or affect the way he rode him?

"No, that was Jenny's job, getting him to the races. When he was there, he was a fabulous ride, you'd have paid to ride him. He had a lot of scope. He was a bit like Denman, a big, strongly made horse."

Midnight Court jumps the last under John Francome in the 1978 Gold CupCredit: Gerry Cranham

Francome's moment of Gold Cup glory had come in 1978 on Midnight Court.

"I think it meant more to Fred because he'd had the favourite in the Gold Cup a few times, with Pendil and different horses. It was his first Gold Cup winner as a trainer and for long-established owners in George and Olive Jackson. That was nice, they'd put a lot of money into the game and you're always pleased to see people rewarded.

"Midnight Court was just about a novice when he won the Gold Cup. He was bought by Tom Costello in Ireland and was a superb jumper from the word go."

The Champion Hurdle of 1981 is remembered for one of the coolest rides ever seen, Francome sitting still on Sea Pigeon until a few strides after the final flight. It is wholly in keeping with his laid-back persona that, even now, he can't be persuaded to get excited about what he did.

"Anybody that rides will tell you they're the easiest rides in the world,” he says. “I'm not being silly, anybody else could have ridden him.

"When I went into the paddock and asked Peter Easterby how he was, he said, 'He's better than he was last year'. And that's all you needed to know.

"All he needed was holding up. That's easier than being told you've got to push one for two miles. I was much better at holding one up than pushing one, that's for certain."

Fair enough, but not everyone would have had the composure to sit quietly for so long.

Sea Pigeon and John Francome are led into Cheltenham's winner enclosure after the 1981 Champion Hurdle

"Most people think the winning post at Cheltenham is at the bottom of the hill. Once you realise it isn't, life's a lot easier.

"I think Nico de Boinville and Rachael Blackmore ride Cheltenham as well as anybody. They know where the winning post is, which makes a big difference. Too many people go too fast these days."

John Francome the jockey was not, as it turns out, shaped by those big-name horses.

"It's all the little horses along the way," he says, and even a few from his days before racing, all the way back to the beach donkeys at Barry Island, west of Cardiff, where he first caught the riding bug. Soon after that, he was helping the milkman with his round in return for a ride on his horse on the way home.

That same milkman was the vendor when Francome's hard-working parents were eventually persuaded to buy him a pony. Black Beauty, as she was called, cost £50, which drained the available funds. It was another year before there was enough saved to buy a saddle for her, which Francome reckons was definitely a good thing.

"I've been up to the British Racing School in Newmarket and if you mention taking the saddle off, which is easily the best way to learn to ride and get your balance, get you sitting in the right place, they come up with all these excuses about health and safety. And maybe it's right but it's definitely not doing riders any good.

"Even if it's only ten minutes trotting round with your feet out the irons, you'll learn more that way than going round for weeks on end with your feet in the irons."

There were a couple more ponies after her before Willy Wagtail came along.

"He was lovely. He was 12.2 hands, jet black with grey spots all over his quarters and a silver mane and tail, the prettiest pony I've ever seen in my life. Really quick and I think my parents gave £150 for him, which was an absolute fortune at the time but he was worth it.

"You see kids go to gymkhanas and they've got to kick, kick, kick their ponies. You don't learn much off those. You need something to be taking charge of you a little bit."

The Horses Who Made Me:

Paul Nicholls: 'That Cheltenham Festival was the turning point - I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those horses' 

Gordon Elliott: 'I was never as wound up before a race in my life and never will be again - I was a nervous wreck' 

Steve Cauthen: 'That win was a big deal - it made me want to stay in Britain and proved I hadn't forgotten how to win big races' 

Sir Mark Prescott: 'It was the best moment of my life - I thought I was the messiah National Hunt racing had been waiting for'

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