Spotting Mark Grant’s name on an Ascot racecard, I remembered a dashing young mop-haired rider I first encountered some years back as stable jockey to the splendid Andy Turnell, with whom I once shared a syndicate horse. Since that first meeting, Mark has not become a household name. Last season he had only 82 rides and produced just four winners. Since April 2013, he has won only 13 hurdles and 14 chases from 564 rides. But here was Mark, hairline receding yet enthusiasm undimmed, riding Count Meribel for the all-conquering Nigel Twiston-Davies stable in a novice hurdle. He rode him well, too, getting the four-year-old into a nice rhythm for a convincing victory that completed a hat trick for the pair after two earlier victories at Carlisle.
With a jump jockey’s riding fee of £165, less the percentage of around 14 per cent all in for an agent, insurance, the Professional Jockeys Association and the on-course physio, plus £17 for the weighing-room valet (with more for extra rides), those 564 rides in five years won’t exactly have kept him in luxury. So how does a ‘journeyman jockey’ like him get by. ‘Oh, I’ve got my own pre-training and breaking yard,’ said the now 36-year-old rider. He has his business, but he rides on because partnering horses in races is a calling, a compulsion, a way of life that it is hard to kick when you know you’ll be a long time retired.
In almost 20 years in the saddle, Mark has ridden nearly 300 winners. He began in Ireland with Enda Bolger, riding his first on Spot the Difference. Then he joined David Wachman at the wrong time. ‘Before he went for the Flat, he had 40 jumpers.
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