FLAVIN STILL IN THERE PUNCHING AFTER THE MOTHER OF ALL KICKINGS

I read with interest in the Racing Post earlier this week that jockey John Flavin has announced his intention to return to his native Ireland within the next few days. The 22 year-old, most recently based with Evan Williams, has deemed the move, along with a return to the amateur ranks, as essential if he is to prolong his race-riding career.

At first I found it hard not to be a little saddened by this revelation. Recourse to any such plan of action looked hard to envisage barely two years ago when, to this pair of eyes at least, Flavin was starting to look like a winner-in-waiting of the British conditional jockeys' championship and maybe something better still further down the line.

However, one fateful day at Wetherby in 2006 introduced the young man from Tramore to the highest highs and lowest lows jump racing has to offer, and his subsequent struggle for form and fitness served as a salutary reminder of how cruelly the racing game we love can disregard and even destroy some of its finest young talents. Ultimately, it is a relief that he is still sound enough of mind and body to have been able to make this week’s decision at all.

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Already a winner of a number of point-to-point races in Ireland, John Flavin’s career in Britain was one I followed with a great deal of interest, initially as a by-product of my running the Brancepethfan fanblog concerning all matters relating to Richard Guest’s then Durham-based training operation. Flavin first appeared on British racecards as Mr J P Flavin (5) on October 20th 2005, partnering Beaver in a Haydock hands and heels handicap hurdle for Guest.

This proved something of an inauspicious debut, though through little fault of his own, as the gelding faded into a well-held sixth with a tongue strap failing to counter his well-established breathing problems sufficiently. Either way, Guest had seen enough that he liked about Flavin at home and on the track to offer him paid-jockey terms, and his second ride for Guest was duly as a 10lb conditional at Hexham 15 days later.

With commitments by the trainer to the likes of Larry McGrath, Paul O’Neill and Patrick Merrigan already established, for the next few months it was very much a case of making do with rides on the yard’s less capable or willing beasts. There were a few positive signs notwithstanding the mediocrity of most of his partners, though. He twice got a very good tune out of the veteran hurdler Teme Valley, placing on him around his beloved Sedgefield on Boxing Day on the latter occasion; and then on January 6th he recorded his first victory for Guest when booting home Insurgent, cast off by Darley for just 800 guineas, in a Musselburgh bumper at rewarding odds.

Flavin continued to improve quite markedly with more race-practice as the winter wore on, although the sickness-induced below-par running of many of the yard’s inmates throughout February and March masked to what extent that came across on paper – in all he managed just two wins and five other podiums from 41 rides prior to the Easter programme.

Come Easter, Guest’s horses were starting to perform better, but O’Neill and Merrigan had both severed their ties with the yard by then and McGrath’s personal problems – which culminated in a six-month ban for cocaine abuse – saw his number of rides first thin out and then stop completely by the end of April. The trainer entrusted his improving conditional with more and better rides, and had his faith repaid in spades, with Flavin recording six wins and four more places from only 22 rides in a 15-day period from Easter Saturday.

A broad and pleasing range of riding competencies was exhibited in these latter performances. It was clear from the two hold-up wins gained on Jodante that Flavin possessed a fine clock in his head, and even around the ultra-sharp Fakenham he knew precisely how much rope to give the leaders before reeling them in late on. It was also clear that he knew how to keep a little in reserve on weak-finishing animals, and his skills in getting Guerilla to find more and more right to the end to win a Wetherby 2m4f hurdle when nearly every other rider has failed to do so with him since then – even when Guerilla is dropped to the minimum trip – look all the more impressive now than they did at the time.

It was Flavin’s win on Pass Me By at Carlisle on Easter Saturday that drew the most praise from his boss, Guest describing him in the Racing Post afterwards as, “the best lad I’ve ever had”. However, it was not this win but the one on Red Perk at Worcester on April 26th that will live longest in my memory.

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Another victory for Red Perk on desperate going at Newcastle two months earlier, plus previous failures on a fast surface, had seemed to establish beyond doubt that this was one Executive Perk gelding for whom the word “firm” in the going description was anathema. Quite why he was allowed to take his chance in a 3m brush hurdle contest at the Severnside venue that evening, then, on ground actually riding a touch faster than the official good to firm, baffled this onlooker completely.

It seemed to baffle Red Perk as well at first, almost as much as being asked to make all of the running on this occasion. What then followed, however, was a masterclass in getting a horse to realise that the prevailing underfoot conditions were alright for him after all. Flavin demonstrated a gossamer-light touch on his partner for the first circuit, letting him cover the ground and take the brushes as lightly on his hooves as he wished, and always a couple of lengths in advance of all his rivals so as to let him practice without distraction or panic.

By the time heads turned for home, Red Perk had been so emboldened by this educative ride that he was allowing himself to stride on confidently despite the fastness of the surface, and it was a happy horse as well as a happy rider that crossed the line a length and a quarter in advance of his nearest pursuer.

Sadly Red Perk was killed in a fall at Hexham two runs later when chasing a hat-trick; but the run in between his final run and this Worcester score, and which set up the bid for the three-timer, saw him record another win on fast ground. It was at Wetherby on April 30th 2006, it was over the West Yorkshire venue’s famously stiff black fences, and it suggested that the lesson Flavin had taught him last time out was one he had gladly kept on board. It also proved to be the last winner the young man was to record until the autumn of the following year.

Confidence could barely have been higher going into the 2m4f chase on the card that afternoon. Having recorded his first double four days earlier at Worcester on Red Perk and Jodante, Flavin had already repeated the feat here with the aforementioned scores on Red Perk again and Guerilla, and was rightly the subject of excited and impressed discussion on Racing UK as the afternoon wore on. Anchored near the back as usual in his race, Jodante popped away contentedly enough early on and all seemed to be going to plan as the even money favourite and his rider approached a fence early on the final circuit.

However, distracted by a faller up ahead, Jodante swerved violently on crossing the fence and shifted Flavin out of the saddle. The young man held on to his partner’s neck rather than let himself fall straight away, and that proved to be the worst possible decision, for on eventually hitting the ground he then received a kick in the face from the gelding, which knocked him unconscious for seven minutes, fractured his skull and cheekbone and ultimately put him out of action for a year.

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Flavin did all the right things he could during his period on the sidelines in terms of working out each day, whilst Guest for his part worked on the mental side of his employee’s rehabilitation and also promised to keep his job open for him. Good as his word, Flavin’s return to race-riding at Southwell on May 4th 2007 was on board a Guest animal, albeit the awful Barney’s Luck; and with Graham Lee and Timmy Murphy taking a lot of the better rides for the by then Nottinghamshire-based operation at the time, Flavin was back in the position of having to make do with rides mostly on the stable’s lesser lights.

In 36 rides for Guest between May and November of last year Flavin managed just four podiums (none of them close finishes except for the last one, more on which shortly) and no wins. The quality of horses alone wasn’t depriving him of winning opportunities, as he performed little better on the few occasions he got to partner decent types like Donovan or Shannon’s Pride (once each) – lack of confidence had plenty to do with it. Hearts must have been in mouths when two of his first six rides back ended in messy unseats, and he looked nervous and ragged on a few other occasions.

Relations between Guest and Flavin – professionally, at least – appeared to change from the end of August, for fully two and a half months elapsed from Bank Holiday Monday until the latter rode for the former once more, and when he did, he did so just twice before the alliance stopped suddenly again. Flavin’s neck defeat on Drum Native at Fakenham on November 20th was regarded as defeat snatched from victory in some quarters, the rider having set sail for home a touch early two fences from home. If that was indeed the catalyst for a split, how ironic that it should take place at a course where Flavin’s judgment had proven so utterly perfect on Jodante previously.

No matter, the light at the end of the tunnel had arrived in the form of a double at Ludlow for Evan Williams five days earlier, and it was with the Welsh handler that Flavin would spend his remaining British days. It would not have mattered one iota that the seller he won on Soviet Sceptre and the bumper taken by Brenin Cwmtudu were both very ordinary contests – they were his first scores for 18 months and something he thought he’d never live to experience again.

Most pleasingly of all, the former knack of extracting extra late on from a generally suspect animal was once again evident in his win on Soviet Sceptre, ordinarily a dreadful rogue at any level but galvanised into action for a rare score here.

Further wins followed for Flavin on Williams animals courtesy of fellow plater Axinit in a Leicester selling hurdle on December 29th and a Hereford claimer on February 10th 2008, and a classier handicap came his way back at the latter venue on Mickmackmagoole on February 25th also. The last-named proved to be his final winner on these shores, and the rides dried up rapidly at the start of March.

Neither injury nor a falling out with Williams knowingly precipitated this sudden end to race-riding, but rather an acceptance that, as a man of 6ft 2ins in height, the rigours of constantly wasting to a minimum weight below 10st was proving too great a burden. A return to the unpaid ranks, and to plying one’s trade off at least a stone more, was deemed the only practicable solution.

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July 6th of this year will witness the third running of the Market Rasen conditional jockeys' handicap hurdle named in honour of Tom Halliday, the Sue Smith-based rider killed in a fall at the track in July 2005 (a race in which Flavin partnered Kidithou for Richard Guest last year). Halliday has also since been immortalised in the name of a young riders' scholarship awarded at the track each autumn by the Northern Racing College. A fellow 10lb claimer, Gareth Horner, cheated death but still attained career-ending injuries in a head-first fall from one of his boss John Cornwall's inmates in a November 2004 Doncaster chase.

Had the cards of fate been dealt only slightly differently, the possibility to ride horses may have been wrested from Flavin as it had these two other young conditionals, and three talents therefore lost to the game, not two. For some time during those black months after the accident it must have seemed and felt like it had, though.

Instead, once he is re-admitted to the amateur ranks back home this coming October, this gifted and above all else fortunate jockey will be in a position to bring to bear in point-to-points and hunters’ chases the experience of riding nearly 175 times under British National Hunt Rules (winning 13 times); of partnering some very reasonable performers inamongst that total; and of course of pulling through a character-testing personal challenge like few others.
Still only 22 years old, he has time on his side more than the likes of JT McNamara, Derek O’Connor, Jamie Codd et al, so maybe a champion rider’s title of some description, albeit not the champion conditional, might not be beyond him some time in the future after all. I genuinely wish him well.