COME ON, TIM, 'TIS BUT A FLESH WOUND

That Racing Blog extends its best wishes to Tim Hampton, currently recuperating after a schooling fall at Jamie Snowden’s operation earlier this week (and reported in the Post on Thursday 24^th) left the 28-year-old with a jaw fracture and concussion.

Hampton won’t need to remind me that this isn’t anywhere near the worst setback of what’s been an interrupted and often ill-starred riding career to date.  Your writer was present when the older brother of fellow amateur Matthew Hampton got off the mark in Point-to-Points at Larkhill’s New Forest fixture in March 2012 aboard the Mary Tory-trained (and subsequent Cheltenham four-mile hunter chase runner-up) Crank Hill in a novice riders’ event, and the post-race interview proved somewhat more poignant than expected.

“I’d started out at 17 and worked for Seamus Mullins and [as a Conditional for] Victoria Scott”, Hampton offered, “but I had a lot of injuries and spent five weeks on a life support machine”.  A tough introduction to racing, though even those bare details don’t tell the whole story of his professional and personal trials during the early 2000s, given the forfeiture of his right kidney following one smash-up and a total of zero rides under Rules for Scott before her abrupt cessation of training during the 2005-6 jumps season.

The now Salisbury-based rider had left riding behind him for five years before returning during the 2011-12 Pointing campaign, and was riding out for George Baker and Paul Henderson at the time of the Larkhill victory. 

“I’m so glad I came back now”, Hampton told me at the time.  Hopefully, with these latest injuries nothing too appalling and a great new opportunity with Snowden still very much in its infancy, he’ll be just as glad to come back again a few weeks hence.