Remembering Jolly Jim

Rather a sad note, but I feel that we should pay our respects to Jim Ratcliffe, who recently passed away. You might remember Mark Tompkins training a horse fairly early in his training career called Jolly Jim - well, that was Jim. You'll have seen Jim Ratcliffe horseboxes doing the rounds over a period of many years, cream coloured with black lettering. His firm was nearly the biggest in town for quite a while and had regular, long-term contracts with numerous stables, most notably Sir Mark's. Jim and his wife Jenny also had a stud in Chippenham at one time, and generally they were just part of the town's furniture - and a popular part too, as Jenny is a saint, and Jim, rogue though he was, was a very, very likeable one. He was also a master of hounds with a pack some distance away for many years which seemed almost unfeasible, but that was Jim - he lived life to the full and did so with a smile on his face. He had the odd horse over the years with various of the trainers who used his firm, including William Jarvis and James Eustace, and he owned quite a few winners. Jim's final years probably weren't happy ones, sadly, but I'll remember him as a popular Newmarket character who had a friendly smile and greeting for everyone. I'll remember him as Jolly Jim.

I'll also have another local character as just a memory, certainly for the next few years, as I doubt that we'll be seeing George Prodoumou much in the immediate future, as he has just been warned off for several years. That's a shame, because there's a lot of Jolly Jim in George, albeit obviously a Greek version. He trained up the other side of Thetford, just off the A11, and would bring his string down to Newmarket to work them (as shown here as he inspects a couple of his horses who have just disembarked from the horsebox at the Links early last month, prior to working along the Cambridge Road AW, I would imagine). George only ever had a handful of ordinary horses, but he knows his onions and used to get at least his share of winners. He's done particularly well recently with Trip Switch. There's no point in re-examining George's case - and there's particularly no point in my doing so, because I know nothing more than what I've read in the papers. George seems to have done wrong and now he is serving his time, and the situation is no more or less complicated than that. George might very well be the rogue which his sentence implies - but, if so, like Jolly Jim he is a very likable one. And I don't think that you'd have to go very far to find worse rogues than he.

On a happier note, I see that a very unfashionable jockey James Banks got off the Cold List today. James has been hampered by only having become a professional jockey relatively late in life, so he was a senior jockey ineligible for conditional jockeys' races from the outset; and that, if nobody knows who you are, makes life difficult. However, one thing which James can do, and has always been able to do, is ride very, very well. He is a reminder of how very, very competitive race-riding is: James (formerly of this parish, his father Martin having been head lad for Paul Howling at Moulton Paddocks for many years) is perfectly good enough to win any race on which he happens to be on the best horse, but he only finds himself on the best horse about once a year, if he's lucky. I'll have to watch the replay of his win today (3.30 Leicester) because I'm told that he gave the horse (Chapel House - form P4FU - 4th favourite in a 7-runner race) a very good ride. He started today on the Cold List having gone 46 rides and 288 days since his last winner - but now he's off it, and will stay off it for quite a while because it will probably take him at least six months to have the 30 rides necessary to get back on the list. Or, if one of his next 30 rides happens to win, he'll stay off it for even longer. Yesterday saw some really deserving winners in the Godolphin stable staff awards, but it's worth reflecting that yesterday's winners aren't necessarily the "unsung heroes" of the sport - compared to an obscure jockey such as James, someone like the excellent Clifford Baker could be viewed as a household name! Let's hope, though, that James' success today brings him a small amount of recognition and that he finds that success does indeed breed success. If opportunities do come knocking on his door less infrequently henceforth, that would be no less than he deserves.