'As long as I'm physically fit, age is just a number' - 50-year-old dreaming big with runaway Newcastle winner
John Reddington may be 50 and his day job is running a construction firm in London, but the owner-rider likes to dream big since surviving a fall that made him realise how lucky he was to be alive and he has his sights set on taking down the big guns in Wednesday's Weatherbys Champion Bumper (5.30).
A native of Bohola in County Mayo who emigrated as a labourer in 1988 before setting up his own company – the JRL Group, which sponsors Thursday's Kim Muir Chase – Reddington began riding horses just over a decade ago when his daughters started riding ponies. His first win came on his first ride in a Navan bumper aboard the Charlie Swan-trained Agent James in 2013 and his second came a decade later at the end of January at Newcastle when Jack Hyde bolted up by 15 lengths after being more than 50 lengths clear at halfway.
The Thomas Gallagher-trained five-year-old, who sports the green and red of Mayo, needs seven horses to come out to get a run at the festival and is priced at 100-1, but Reddington said: "He's the best horse I've been involved in and he can definitely be competitive in the Champion Bumper. Just to be at Cheltenham is fabulous. To own a horse is even better but having the opportunity to ride there is just incredible."
Of his Hertfordshire-based trainer, who is from nearby Kiltimagh at home in Mayo, he added: "Thomas is a fantastic trainer. He understands how to get horses fit and he's a great sportsman himself having played for the Mayo minor football team in his younger days. He is one of the most dedicated men I've ever worked with – he's great at what he does."
It hasn't always been plain sailing for the Corinthian rider as he suffered a near-death experience a few years ago when he fell off a horse and ruptured his spleen, but the experience has only reinvigorated his passion for action.
He said: "I realised how lucky I was to be alive. It slowed me down for a few months but once you are in that gutter then you realise how lucky you are. As long as I’m physically fit I'm okay, age is just a number. The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw reckoned that 'We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing'."
There are plenty of potential superstars in Wednesday's Grade 1 but Reddington nominates the John Kiely-trained A Dream To Share as the one everyone has to beat. He said: "The best horse in the race is trained by a great man in John Kiely. John is incredible, a gentleman, and he is some man to get a horse ready. John was the first man to congratulate me the day I won on Agent James at Navan."
Agent James was one of Reddington's first horses and was named after the rider's closest friend James Collins who died last October. He was a former Irish champion conditional jockey and won the charity race at the 2015 Cheltenham Festival aboard Knight's Parade and will be at the forefront of Reddington's mind next week.
Reddington said: "James was my best friend. He was such an incredible man. You would see him coming and you couldn't help but smile. His wife Fiona and his two daughters, Molly and Grace, are hopefully going to come over to Cheltenham so that will be brilliant."
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Published on inCheltenham Festival
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