Rachel King will take two rides at Royal Ascot – on her honeymoon.
A former point-to-point rider in the UK, King is now a multiple Group One-winning jockey on the Flat in Australia but returned home to tie the knot. The 33-year-old, who was brought up in Oxfordshire, tied the knot with Australian racing manager Luke Hilton in Oxford on Sunday but the honeymoon will be short and sweet; she is due to ride Elim for Ed Bethell in Wednesday’s Kensington Palace Stakes and Strutting for John and Thady Gosden in Friday’s Sandringham Stakes. These will be her first rides in Britain for 11 years,
King and Hilton visited Royal Ascot on the Tuesday of last year and after so many people, including her father, asked why she was on her feet, and not horseback, she decided to make an effort to get some rides this year by employing Tony Hind, Ryan Moore’s agent, on the recommendation of the jockey who she met while riding in Japan during the winter.
“For a while it looked like I’d be on my feet again but it’s fantastic to have a couple of rides,” she said before tying the knot on Sunday.
Originally King wanted to follow her father into the point-to-point world – he rode the first-ever winner at Kingston Blount and trained a few – and considered the Flat, about which she knew nothing, “boring”. But former trainer Joe Tuite kept insisting that she was the right weight to pursue a career in that sphere if she wanted.
After one winter and one winner as an apprentice, she switched back to being an amateur and joined trainer Clive Cox – a guest at Sunday’s nuptials – where she doubled up as a secretary who had a few rides in amateur races. Just over a decade ago she decided to go to Sydney for a two-month holiday; she is still there and now speaks with an Aussie accent.
The club of British female jockeys who have ridden Group One winners can still be counted on one hand but she is one of them, the first of five coming in 2018. She has also ridden in the Melbourne Cup twice.
For a long time in Sunday’s Prix de Diane it looked like Sussex-based trainer David Menuisier was going to make a great return to his homeland by winning France’s premier fillies’ Classic. Half a furlong from home his Tamfana was in front but the cavalry were coming and in the last 75 yards she and Oisin Murphy were edged into third. The race was won by the French-trained Sparkling Plenty.
Brazilian taking on the big-name trainers at Royal Ascot
Make Haste is a pretty good description of how Diego Dias’s career is going – as well as the name of the favourite in Wednesday’s Queen Mary Stakes at Ascot he trains.
Dias, a former Brazilian jockey-turned-Curragh trainer, will saddle both Make Haste and Brosay, an outsider in the Windsor Castle Stakes, at Royal Ascot on Wednesday.
Last year Dias announced his arrival in the training ranks in no uncertain terms by sending out 20-1 shot Mansa Musa to win a £30,000 first prize in a maiden at Glorious Goodwood, with his first runner in Britain. The colt was subsequently sold to America and won a sprint at Saratoga last time out.
Brosay travelled over to the Sussex course in the spring and won on heavy ground under fellow Brazilian Silvestre de Sousa to make it two out of three for Dias on trips across the Irish Sea, but it was the filly Make Haste who turned heads when she blitzed a Naas maiden by three and a quarter lengths.
Dias, 42, was born in Minas Gerais, a mining state in Brazil, to a racing family. His father had been a successful jockey and trainer and Dias himself rode 475 winners but, he says, nothing major.
“There were plenty of jockeys riding in Brazil, most stables had their own jockeys and it was a struggle to get rides,” he explains. “By this time, 2002, my best friend was working in Ireland and he asked me to come over to work for Joseph Quinn who was preparing two-year-olds for the breeze-up sales [where they gallop prior to the sale] and training a few. I had the opportunity to ride for him and rode seven winners. They were good times.
“I came over unable to speak a word of English and for the first couple of months it was difficult, but with the help of Joe and his family I started to pick it up. I rode in the breeze-ups for Joe and, after a few years, bought one myself and did well with it. The next year I bought two and did well with them and I have been on my own for six years.”
He moved to the Curragh where he decided to train the two-year-olds, including Mansa Musa, who had not sold at the breeze-ups. “I decided to get a licence and try to get those horses to do something and give them a chance,” he adds. “Mansa Musa won at Goodwood and was second in a Group Three. He was a breeze-up graduate but did not get one bid.”
Dias is now up to 17 horses and if Make Haste does her thing on Wednesday you can probably double that number. She was bought for 75,000 guineas from Tattersalls Book 2 last autumn by a syndicate. “She was a really nice, easy-going type who looked like she might be smart,” he recalls. “She was doing nice work at home and we went to Naas very confident. Her preparation has gone very nicely. She’s in top form and I am looking forward to the Queen Mary. Brosay was sold online and the new owners have kept him with me. I think he could run a big race, too.”
With bookmakers preferring his filly to those of Aidan O’Brien and Wesley Ward in the first race on Wednesday, how does that feel for the boy from Minas Gerais, mixing it with the big boys? “I’m delighted to be around Aidan, he is the top trainer in the world, so I’m trying to follow his steps,” he says.
“I’ve been to Royal Ascot on the Wednesday for the last two years just for a day out. The first time, when I didn’t have a licence, I was standing beside Simon Chappell, the owner of Make Haste, and said I’d come back with a runner one day. Thanks to him it’s about to come true.
“For me, training has just happened. When I was a small boy in Brazil I never thought for a moment I’d leave the place – until I got a call. Now I’ve got the tails and a nice top hat!”