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For a jockey the lifestyle is altogether different: there are only two meetings a week and you don’t spend hours on the road between the 35 Flat racing tracks in the UK staging racing every day of the week or pleasing trainers across the land by turning up to ride work. In Hong Kong Neil would be at the training track from 4.45 a.m. to 8.30 a.m., partnering the seven or eight ready tacked-up horses he was likely to be riding at Happy Valley on Wednesdays or Sha Tin at the weekend. Jockeys there get 10 per cent of winning purses, which are hugely generous by UK standards, and 5 per cent for placing second to fifth.
But the pressure in front of heavy-betting and vociferous crowds averaging more than 40,000 is intense. ‘In Hong Kong there’s no hiding place,’ he says. ‘With only 18 races a week to prove yourself, you have to be so mentally sharp.’ In Britain, he argues, most races develop only over the last half-mile. ‘In Hong Kong it’s all about speed from the gate and position through the race. You need your brain switched on all the time: it’s about reaction speed, positioning and balance.’
Clearly it is also about determination: in Hong Kong, where he won top races such as the QEII Cup on the appropriately named Blazing Speed and the Classic Mile on Beauty Only, they gave him the nickname ‘The Iron Man’. The lighter racing programme also gave him time to improve his diet and fitness: ‘I am mentally and physically better prepared. I really upped my game.’ In his gentle Irish accent a note of scorn creeps in only when he talks of those who are not prepared to put their heads down and graft for opportunities.
That is what he has had to do on coming back to Britain after those well-rewarded ten years. He and Trish returned because they have four boys, two of an age to be tempted by the pony-racing circuit that is now so vital for would-be young jockeys. It was family payback time. Not everybody with rides to offer was immediately recalling 44-year-old Neil’s past successes such as Borderlescott’s Nunthorpe Stakes or the two-year-old exploits of Amadeus Wolf for his old chum Kevin Ryan. ‘There was a whole different array of new trainers. I was under no illusions and nothing comes without hard work but I am in a good space.’ That is a fair assessment.
Thanks to the Hong Kong sharpness, he has done far more than pick up the threads of a past career: the day we met at Newbury Neil Callan was back in the top five jockeys list with a strike rate of 20 per cent winners to rides. That day he had rides for Dominic Ffrench Davis, Charlie Fellowes, Marco Botti (with whom he has forged an effective alliance), Charlie Johnston, Ed Dunlop and Michael Bell. After we spoke, there were two races left on the card: Neil took the 1½-mile Class 4 Handicap on the top-weight Seal of Solomon for Ed Dunlop at 6-1, dictating a shrewd pace on a horse who had won over two miles. He then followed up with an all-the-way victory on Michael Bell’s Burdett Road over ten furlongs at the same price. A pretty decent day’s work.
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