Dazzler Darryll
Robin Oakley
Last year’s Flat jockeys’ championship was a classic, an intriguing all-out battle to the last week of the season, with Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer sharing the title. So it was in 1987 when Pat Eddery and Steve Cauthen slugged each other into total exhaustion as Cauthen won 197–195.
This year the title has long seemed a foregone conclusion. Put a jockey with the talent of Ryan Moore in combination with Sir Michael Stoute’s 200-plus horsepower and the contest seemed over before it had begun, even with Richard Hughes riding out of his skin.
Combine a Kieren Fallon with Sir Michael, let a fired-up Frankie Dettori go after the title with Godolphin’s battalions enjoying a good season and there is little doubt most years about the outcome. Freelances without the backing of a numerically strong yard have only a limited chance. But it still comes as a surprise that some of the top riding talents have never made it to champion. Richard Hughes, the master of the waiting race, is an obvious example. Another who could end his career with people saying, ‘I wonder why he was never top dog?’ is Darryll Holland.
Blessed with a natural talent which Barry Hills discovered and nurtured when he was a raw novice and having ridden for a clutch of the top trainers like Barry, Mark Johnston, Luca Cumani, and Geoff Wragg, Darryll is good enough to come in for the occasional ride from Coolmore. He has international experience. As he showed through his partnership with Falbrav, he can handle big occasions: ‘He was the complete horse. He had gears, a change of pace, the speed to get out of trouble and a real appetite for racing.’ And few riders have greater determination in a finish.
There was a prime example at Ascot the other day in the closest of all races involving a four-horse field. Riding Rileyskeepingfaith for Mick Channon, Darryll found his mount taking a keen hold. So he settled him in behind the other three. When he sought to pull out and go to win his race a furlong out the space was no more than the Marmite in a sandwich. But somehow the jockey squeezed his horse’s head through to grab the lead in the last 50 yards and win by half a length from Weald Park, with the other two dead-heating a short head behind them. The stewards took a look but he was allowed to keep the race, though earning a four-day suspension.
Darryll’s comment? ‘I put his head in there and it got a bit tight but I was at the point of no return. That’s the way it is.’ He had told me a few minutes before, ‘I like winning,’ and it is his obvious determination to go on doing so which gets him rides from so many trainers.
Darryll is a natural. When he left Lancashire, the son of a builder and a nurse with no racing background, to work for such a tough task-master as Barry Bills, the square-jawed Mancunian was told by the trainer after a few weeks to cancel his booking with the British Racing School because he was learning so fast on the job. Some in the Hills team feel that Darryll could have gone on to still greater achievements than he has (although he has ridden as many as six Group Ones in a season Darryll, surprisingly, has yet to ride a Classic winner) but the jockey freely admits that Barry was a father figure to him.
He was one, it seems, prepared to administer some parental correction. As a 7lbclaiming apprentice Darryll won a race at Doncaster by a short head, but used the whip liberally in doing so and earned himself a suspension for ‘excessive use’. He went on to Sandown for an evening meeting, won another close race and earned another whip ban.
He was more than a little chuffed when returning to the Hills yard. But the next morning as Darryll dismounted the first horse he rode at exercise he suddenly felt an enormous welt across the back of his legs. He looked round to see the trainer with a Long Tom (a lungeing whip) in his hand. And when the apprentice rider asked, ‘What was that for?’ the reply was, ‘Now you know what that f****** horse felt like last night.’ The angry apprentice stormed off to his lodgings, fully determined to quit. Only to get a call from the trainer as if nothing had happened: ‘Come on, hurry up, your horse is tacked up and waiting for you ... ’ Lesson learnt, the old-fashioned way. And he still loves to ride a winner for Barry.
Darryll, who became champion apprentice with a then-record 78 winners in the season, had a year as first rider to Hills, then moved up north to ride for Mark Johnston. But within months the rider, whom his friends call the ‘Gentleman Gypsy’, accepted an offer to go and ride in Hong Kong, a period he still recalls with huge pleasure. One night he rode four winners at Happy Valley. Competing against the likes of Gary Stevens, Gerard Moss and the Australians, he reckons, taught him to ride a lot tighter and become a better judge of pace.
As a freelance, the Dazzler, as some call him for his habit of turning up at the races in a smart suit, has a formidable workrate. In a good year he will ride for around 100 trainers and win for around 50 of them. But what strikes you is his straightforward Manchester realism. Does it worry him that he’s twice been second without winning the title? Not really. ‘I’m not going to complain that I haven’t been given enough opportunities. It just hasn’t happened.’ q
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