Jockey Tyrone Williams has apparently passed away.
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Jockey Tyrone Williams has apparently passed away.
Hearing of any death is difficult enough but somehow when it's before their time it's all the harder. I couldn't tell you what age he was but it doesn't matter. I remember when he was an apprentice coming through the ranks so I suppose I still think of him as a kid.
(A couple of large glasses of rich red and a few cans of Guinness this evening are maybe making me more melancholy than usual but this news has touched me when usually I wouldn't let it.)
Why did he retire so young? Looks like 39 from what I've read.
Very sad.
Yes tragic, bless him.
Joe Mercer R.I.P.
Joe was one of the turf stalwarts , his career ran nearly forty years.
Associated with Brigadier Gerard, Bustino, Kris, Le Moss and a host of others but never won a Derby.
Gave wonderful interviews to ATR and such recently.
One class man.
A great jockey, who never rang up for a ride. When Frenchie Nicholson died his son David was interviewed and they talked about all the wonderful jockeys his father had produced. They showed films of Eddery and Swinburn and David agreed they were fine jockeys but said Mercer was the best jockey he'd seen.
ITV had an interview with him recently - not sure if the ATR one so apologies if it was - where said Frankel wouldn't have got near Mill Reef. Bless, he said he had had a wonderful life. He, along with Piggott and Carson, the jockeys of my early memories, Loved Mill Reef, can still see the news clip of him in his cast and remembering how amazing it was they saved him and him having to put up with that.
“Ian Balding only realised that something out of the ordinary was in his midst the first time he invited Mill Reef to have a proper gallop.
The small but compact American-bred colt, who stood 15.2 hands, had proved a model pupil as a yearling and in all his early work but the trainer was in no rush to see how big his engine was.
This was effectively day one at school and his instruction to John Hallum, Mill Reef’s work rider, was to merely get upsides his lead horse and then “just let him go a stride faster”.
Everything went perfectly to plan to plan, apart from the part where Mill Reef moved alongside his companion and then breezed about 20 lengths clear.
“John, I told you to just go a stride faster,” the exasperated trainer said as horse and rider walked back towards him. “Guvnor, I promise you, that’s all I was doing,” Hallum replied.”
John Oaksey's book about Mill Reef got me interested in racing. Plenty of Col Blimp type passages, but fascinating none the less.
Mince Pie For Starters , Oaksey's autobiography I have just re read.
Pure unapologetic fun; his telling of a Houses Of Parliament tour of Northern Ireland he was on is classic Oaksey.
1970/71 was a great racing era I unfortunately missed, but writers like Lord Oaksey set the scene beautifully.
The Race of the Century
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...8GXUkisNuJvQw8
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...xFCPwqBBTGMu5o
Brigadier and Joe’s 2000 Guineas