When Nico de Boinville was at public boarding school in Berkshire, while Best Mate was winning three Gold Cups in succession at the Cheltenham Festival between 2002 and 2004, he bunked off classes in an early sign of his obsession with horse racing. “I definitely snuck out of a couple of lessons to watch Best Mate,” he says. “It was then that Cheltenham came on my radar, because before that I was massively into Flat racing.”
The 32-year-old jockey, who is English racing’s best hope of challenging the domination of the annual Irish invasion at Cheltenham this coming week, laughs when asked if he would have been joined by any other rebellious public schoolboys during his illicit Festival-watching. “Not at all. No one else was fussed. It was all football and only I followed the racing.”
On Wednesday, De Boinville rides the imperious Shishkin in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, which promises to be the most compelling race of the week. Shishkin’s victory over Energumene, from the mighty Irish yard of Willie Mullins, lit up Ascot in January and the swift resumption of their rivalry is an enticing prospect. De Boinville is on Constitution Hill in the opening race of the Festival on Tuesday, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, and he again has an outstanding horse on which to try to stem the tide of Irish winners.
But it’s intriguing to hear about De Boinville’s unlikely journey into racing and how, with his privileged and very different background to most of his peers, he has established himself as a leading English jockey. His mother and father, who was an insurance broker, pushed him towards further education and De Boinville accepted a place to study politics and history at Newcastle University. Those interests remain and help explain why we cover many subjects including the history of Ukraine and the mentality of Vladimir Putin as De Boinville’s intelligence shines out. But he understood almost instantly that university was a pale imitation of a vivid racing life and dropped out after six weeks.
“I knew straight away, as soon as I walked in, that it wasn’t going to last long,” he says. “That was a bit of a shame because I’m sure if it was a condensed course I would have really enjoyed it. It just seemed very strung out.”
Were his parents willing to give him time to establish himself in racing? “Very much so. The timelines were set by myself. I said: ‘You’ve got until you’re 25 to see what you can do.’ I’m very much a realist, even now.”
Plumpton 1.00 Jazz King 1.35 Ballinsker 2.10 Kansas City Chief 2.45 One For Dunstan 3.20 Sainte Doctor (nap) 3.55 Tommy Dillion (nb)
Stratford-On-Avon 1.45 Raffles Gitane 2.20 Interne De Sivola 2.55 Corran Cross 3.30 Osprey Call 4.05 Envoye Special 4.40 Rambo T
Taunton 2.00 Highstakesplayer 2.35 Apothicaire 3.10 Some Detail 3.45 Amelia’s Dance 4.20 Majestic Merlin 4.50 Sindabella
Wolverhampton 5.00 Plumette 5.30 Sweet Bertie 6.00 Progressive 6.30 Eternal Summer 7.00 Catbird Seat 7.30 It’s A Love Thing
De Boinville’s limited experience of working with racehorses had been obtained during his gap year in France. “I wanted to improve my French and I spent time with Richard Gibson [an English trainer based in France]. It was a fantastic stepping stone and he taught me an awful lot.”
Nicky Henderson agreed to take De Boinville on at his Seven Barrows yard but it was a lowly position. “I was the fourth amateur rider because there was a host of young wannabe jockeys and we all started as stable staff trying to work our way up. It was highly competitive and we tried to learn from Barry [Geraghty] and AP [McCoy], who rode for Nicky. I kept my mouth shut and just watched and learned. As you progressed, you could start to ask questions, but in the beginning they were not looking twice at an amateur Mr Posh de Boinville.”
De Boinville struggled and between May 2009 and April 2012 he had two winners in 30 rides. “It was tough. I hadn’t done any pony racing and I didn’t have any real experience coming into a big yard like Seven Barrows. David Bass [now his close friend] turned up at the same time and he’d had 200 rides point-to-pointing.”
At the age of 22 De Boinville handed in his notice with the intention of moving back to France. “I was down in the dumps and fully prepared to head back to France and give it a go there.”
Henderson, an Old Etonian, is even posher than De Boinville. But he saw something else in the riding and sheer character of the former public schoolboy. He refused to accept De Boinville’s departure and, slowly, the opportunities came. He rode at Cheltenham in 2012 and picked up his first Festival winner on Whisper in the Coral Cup in 2014. A year later his life was transformed when he surprisingly won the Gold Cup on Coneygee, a novice chaser from a small yard trained by Mark Bradstock.
“I only lost my claim [under the handicapping rules that favour apprentice jockeys] the month before so it was a fantastic story. I owe so much to Mark and Sara [Bradstock] because lots of people were pushing them not to keep me on the horse for the Gold Cup. They put an awful lot of faith in me and what a shout to go and run a novice in the Gold Cup. I’m not sure it’s going to be done again. I’ve had a few more stabs at the Gold Cup and I know how hard it is to win.”
Jon Pullin, the new clerk of the course at Cheltenham, said on Sunday that the fields for the opening day of the track’s Festival meeting on Tuesday are “very competitive … with numbers of runners comparable to or higher [than] recent years” – even though the National Hunt Chase, the final event on the card, has attracted just seven runners, its smallest field this century.
For the second year running, 10 will go to post for the Champion Hurdle, which is in line with the 10-year average, while a 12-runner field for the Mares’ Hurdle is the second-largest in the last five years. An 11-strong field for the Arkle Trophy is also well ahead of the five runners in 2021, as well as the 10-year average of 8.2.
However, the seven-runner field for the National Hunt Chase is the first in single figures this century, for a race which attracted 26 runners in 2002 and has a 10-year average of 16.5. The Supreme Novice Hurdle, meanwhile, has nine declared runners, one more than in 2021 but well below the 10-year average of 15.7.
Direct comparisons with last year’s Festival are potentially misleading, as owners were banned from attending due to Covid-19 restrictions. This may have persuaded some owners with unfancied or so-called “social” runners to bypass the meeting.
However, the small field for the National Hunt Chase, which has attracted just two runners from British stables, will still come as a surprise to many punters – not least when the idea of expanding the meeting to five days is again being floated in some quarters.
The going for the first day of the Festival, meanwhile, is expected to be good-to-soft, after plans to continue watering the track were put on hold following 4mm of rain overnight on Saturday. No further rain is forecast for the track until Wednesday, while Thursday and Friday are expected to be dry and mild.
"We'll monitor conditions and see how much it dries before making any decision on any further watering,” Pullin."Given where we are currently and the forecast ahead, we will be somewhere around good-to-soft for the start of the meeting.
"There is a little bit of rain on the radar for Wednesday at the moment, so we are keeping an eye on that. At the moment it looks like 2-3mm and then Thursday and Friday are looking dry, bright and sunny and temperatures up to 14C.” Greg Wood
De Boinville pauses when I ask how difficult it was to gain acceptance in the uncompromising and often insular weighing room. “When I started with Richard Gibson he said: ‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t speak French. If you can speak horse language you will go far.’ That’s how it is in our sport. If you can ride, people respect you. You’ve just got to get on with people and I like to think that I do and I’m quite open and honest. It also helped that I never felt typecast.”
What does he think of the weighing-room culture now – especially in the wake of Bryony Frost being bullied by Robbie Dunne? “It’s progressed hugely and some jockeys are driving that forward. Obviously the past couple of years we’ve had issues that needed addressing. But we’re all doing our utmost to make sure we’ve learned from those mistakes.
“Ultimately it’s about being kind and accepting of our colleagues. But at the same time we are in a dangerous elite sport and there will be flare ups. But we’ll get to a point where we can manage these situations correctly – with open and honest discussion.”
The solicitor representing Dunne during the bullying tribunal indicated he had been defended by senior jockeys, including De Boinville and Richard Johnson. Was that the case? “Some of us in the weighing room tried to resolve these issues before they got so far out of hand they became public knowledge,” De Boinville says. “Both of them wanted to talk to me. I did give my advice to Bryony and to Robbie. All I advised was to have an open and honest discussion. That wasn’t to be but I still get on well with Robbie and Bryony.”
Does Frost feel welcomed in the weighing room again? “She went through a very difficult period and perhaps she did feel like an outsider. But from what I’ve observed over the past few months, she’s felt much more part of the weighing room again.
“There will be disputes and we don’t all have to get on. We are our own self-employed businesses so it doesn’t have to be one big happy family. But we have to respect our fellow jockeys and ensure we can ride iron-to-iron and be safe with them.”
De Boinville could be riding iron-to-iron alongside Paul Townend, his Irish contemporary, when Shishkin and Energumene go head to head in the Champion Chase. His face lights up when remembering their battle at Ascot.
“If there’s an awful lot of hype, like at Ascot, you hope to God you put up your best performance and produce something special, because it’s very rare that two horses come together at their peak. That’s what excited people because these are two exceptional racehorses who put up amazing performances. I felt incredibly privileged to be a part of it, let alone win it.”
Shishkin made two small mistakes before seizing victory. “It probably looked a lot worse than when I was on him because we were going so fast down that hill. But Shishkin can always pull something out of the bag when he’s on the back foot. He certainly did it when we won the Supreme [at the 2020 Festival]. We were all but knocked out and he found a way to come back and win. That was very similar to Ascot and when you get that feeling from a crowd it’s very rare. The only other time I can think of the crowd engaging with a racehorse so deeply was when Sprinter Sacre won at Cheltenham that October he came back [from a heart problem in 2015].”
De Boinville used to be the work rider for Sprinter Sacre before he graduated to being his race jockey and they won the Champion Chase together in 2016. How do Sprinter and Shishkin compare? “Sprinter was a flamboyant showboater. He was your Naseem Hamed whereas Shiskhin is not as flash. But he’s got an incredible talent.”
De Boinville has peppered our conversation with boxing references. “I really enjoy boxing. They are not so different, boxers and jockeys. We are laying it all out for everyone to see and there is no hiding place.”
It does not take long before De Boinville returns to discussing Ukraine. “Going back through the history of it is very, very interesting and I read Putin’s speech before it all kicked off. What he believes is interesting in itself. But to then see what they’ve carried out has been absolutely devastating – with women, children and journalists being fired upon. It’s madness but then we see world champion boxers like [Vasiliy] Lomachenko and [Oleksandr] Usyk fighting in the Ukrainian army – with the Klitschko brothers as well. It’s humbling to see Usyk, who has a massive title defence [against Anthony Joshua], and he stopped all his training to go home and fight. Amazing.”
Plumpton 1.00 Jazz King 1.35 Ballinsker 2.10 Kansas City Chief 2.45 One For Dunstan 3.20 Sainte Doctor (nap) 3.55 Tommy Dillion (nb)
Stratford 1.45 Raffles Gitane 2.20 Interne De Sivola 2.55 Corran Cross 3.30 Osprey Call 4.05 Envoye Special 4.40 Rambo T
Taunton 2.00 Highstakesplayer 2.35 Apothicaire 3.10 Some Detail 3.45 Amelia’s Dance 4.20 Majestic Merlin 4.50 Sindabella
Wolverhampton 5.00 Plumette 5.30 Sweet Bertie 6.00 Progressive 6.30 Eternal Summer 7.00 Catbird Seat 7.30 It’s A Love Thing
Does he miss the more intellectual side of life he might have had as a history and politics graduate? De Boinville smiles. “You’d be surprised because we have these discussions in the weighing room. There are a lot of highly intelligent jockeys and we bounce ideas off each other. There’s enough to keep you intellectually stimulated.”
During the heat and fervour of Cheltenham there will be little room for historical or political debate. But is De Boinville, the supreme racer, optimistic he will bring home at least two big winners next week in Shishkin and Constitution Hill? “Well,” he says, “I’m going to use that classic cliche. I’ll take just one. It’s such a competitive environment, and there are so many good horses, jockeys and trainers. It will be a privilege just to ride one winner next week.”
The Cheltenham Festival will be live on ITV from Tuesday to Friday. Visit greatbritishracing.com
