4th January 2009 - HAYLEY TURNER - Brough Scott

Hayley’s mother wants to put the record straight. “I never had a riding school and posh ponies,” says Kate Turner. “I was a single mum with three small girls who made ends meet working as a riding instructor. Hayley just tagged along and rode everything she could. That kid,” adds Kate with the vehemence of someone now actually smaller than her 5 foot 2 daughter, “was never, ever spoilt.”

For someone who says she is shy and does not like to talk to the media this was as surprisingly forceful as it was deeply revealing. For while the world celebrates the excitement and ponders the implications of Hayley Turner becoming the first British woman to ride 100 winners in a calendar year, it’s been easy to gloss over her origins. Easy but wrong.

For that’s where Hayley’s drive, understanding, and actual all-consuming love of being with horses came from. “None of my family had anything to do with horses,” explained Kate Turner on New Year’s Day. “But there was a riding place next to my school and I used to hang over the fence and beg for a lesson, I got to spend every spare minute there. But then I got married very young and by the time I was 27 Richard and I were separated and I had to find something to pay the mortage. Obviously the girls had to come too, but while the younger pair began to want to stay with Nan or a with a school friend, Hayley never missed a day. She just loved it. However cold it was, however mucky the stable, however difficult the pony, she came along like my little shadow. ”

There is nothing whiney or bitter about Kate’s account. She is happy now. She is 50, all three daughters are successful. She has a new partner who breeds thoroughbreds. At home near Southwell she has a ménage in which to ride them and has somehow got lumbered with three ex racehorses that Hayley knew on the track. Richard Turner takes equal delight in their daughter’s progress and he and his partner were at Wolverhampton to cheer on the hundred. But of all the qualities that Hayley needs to meet the new expectations, none are more important than the down to earth summary her mother brings to those early days : “we just had to get on with it.”

You notice this at the centre of Hayley’s handling of the media circus. She is smiley and pleasant, she will look you in the face and answer the questions. But she is in control and will not allow you to put any “I have fought prejudice every day” quotes into her mouth. Back in October my friend Owen Slot went to interview her for The Times. He returned charmed, impressed but frustrated. “After 20 minutes,” Hayley told me later, “I told him ‘I know what you want me to say but I am not going to say it.’”

She was the same when we spoke on Thursday. “There is not a physical element in the weighing room” she said firmly to the suggestion that she has had to overcome an element of intimidation along the way. “Of course people yell and shout in a race but you ignore that. If they argue afterwards you need to listen because you may learn something. But what is said in there stays in there.”

The voice carried a touch of hangover from toasting the 100 winner,1,000 ride season on New Year’s Eve. But the analysis was a steady as ever. “I will have a few days at home just being lazy,” said Hayley, “then I want to have a bit of a holiday, probably go skiing before coming back on the All Weather at the end of the month just like I did last year. I have discussed it with the guvnor (Michael Bell) and we think we should not break a winning formula. The main ambition must to be to try and get on better horses and ride in bigger races.”
Nothing new there. No crowd pleasing statements along the lines of “I want to be champion jockey, ride the Derby winner and whip Frankie’s arse.” But then this is the girl who, after tieing for the Apprentice Championship three years ago, said only “I don’t want a dream, I want to make a living.” This is the jockey who will quickly point out that 10 (??) others went through the magic 100 barrier on the flat in 2008 including two, George Baker and Jim Crowley, also handled by her admirable agent Guy Jewell.
Baker, who is about 9 foot long and can’t ride under 9 stone, clocked up 114 winners (??) and Jim Crowley, who three years ago was a 46 winner a season jump jockey, scored 113 (??). Yet there was no Sky News reporter slavvering over the microphone when they passed the 100 mark, no bookmaker quotes on classic rides or championship chances, no couture-clad photo shoot as “The Face of The Derby 2009” - although the sight of seeing Baker’s spindle shanks peeking out of a skirt might lure an intriguing new audience come classic day. Yet, just as the fact of Turner’s sex originally lessened her chances, it now inflates expectations beyond the achievements so far.

For make no mistake there is a whole new level to which Hayley must climb. She may have played in racing’s Premiership, have ridden big winners on TV, but she has yet to be rated in our Champion’s League. Her first ever Group One ride did not come until the Cheveley Park last September, her first Group winner had to wait until November and that only a Group Three in Germany. She must measure up. She must avoid serious injury – to which Jewell’s former clients Tim Sprake and David Harrison’s foreshortened careers are unhappy witness and, this being Europe, she must go where no woman has trod before.

Julie Krone may well have won the Belmont Stakes in 1993 and, not often mentioned, Marina Lescano the Argentinian Triple Crown way back in 1978, but women have up till now been completely unconsidered in Europe’s classic scene. Hayley is nearly there. She has climbed slowly – her first winner was all of nine years ago – and not the least of Michael Bell’s assets as a mentor is in never putting her in a position where she was overfaced, and when he has set her a challenge, most notably with Furnace in the big handicap at Ascot in September, she has delivered for him.

Ascot has been crucial as a racecourse because it was there, in the 2007 Shergar Cup, where she was most obviously included by reason of gender in front of status. Her winner that day on the 33-1 shot Relative Order challenged assumptions like nothing before. Her last stride clincher this year on GEE DEE NEN as “Captain” of the GB Shergar Cup team was very public display of the progress made.

As an outsider, it has been noticeable how her strength and poise have increased. She used to bounce off a puller a bit like a skier off a speedboat but the ice cool ride she gave Aeroplane at Lingfield on Monday (?) and the rough-house battle with which she hit the hundred on the awkward Mullitovermaurice at Wolverhampton, would not have been bettered by any of the top ten. But a mother’s view is always closer. “I used to be shredded just watching her,” said Kate Turner on Thursday. “She was such a weak and tiny little person. But she always weighed up things. She always knew what she wanted and never blamed the horses. And when she had her first ride (on Markellis at Southwell in March 2000), she didn’t come back as the horse broke its leg. I thought ‘if this girl can take that she can take anything.’ She has and I don’t now see why she can’t go all the way.

Racing has developed an almost unhealthy longing for Hayley to make it. If she does there will be public junketings of almost Coronation dimensions. But it will also have proof that SOME OF THE things are learnt at a mother’s knee.