The fourth-placed runner in a Nottingham handicap for amateur riders seems an unlikely source for the day’s best racing story but such was definitely the case on Friday. In urging Pretty Jewel past tiring rivals to earn £194 in prize money, Dr Misha Voikhansky was achieving the latest of many successes over the obstacles put in his way more than 40 years ago.
Voikhansky was just nine when his mother, who had spoken out against the abuse of psychiatry in Soviet hospitals, fled to London. For four years, young Misha was prevented from joining her and lived instead with his grandmother in Leningrad.
His case was repeatedly raised in parliament. “Ministers share the anxiety of a great many people in Britain about it,” the House of Commons was told in 1978.
“It was a nightmare,” Voikhansky, now 51, says. “I thought I was probably never going to see my mother again. From the age of nine to 13, I didn’t know which country I was going to grow up in.
“I was a very small part in a very difficult political situation. Me and my family, we were like a mouse who gets mangled by a tank as it goes by. We were small pawns to this great dinosaur state that was unravelling. It was a horrible society to live in, there were millions of people suffering. What happened to me was really pretty lenient.”
Eventually, after vocal support from such luminaries as Tom Stoppard and Yehudi Menuhin, Voikhansky was permitted to leave the USSR and was reunited with his mother in Cambridge. Decades later, he works as a GP in Birmingham, has a wife, Sally, and two children, Cal and Alec, and, in the very little amount of time left over, pursues a belated career as an amateur jockey.
The seeds were sown long ago, when some medical school friends took him to Newmarket. “The whole thing and the sound of the horses, I was infatuated with it. And there was the bonus of going back to the bookmaker I’d given £2 and getting £6 back.”
A latecomer to riding, Voikhansky, then in his 40s, managed to persuade a local trainer, Andrew Hollinshead, to let him ride out with his string. One of the inevitable falls led to a depressed skull fracture and an apparent end to this particular sideline. “I swore to my wife then that I’d give it up. It was obviously far too dangerous.”
But the lure proved stronger than the oath. Having made his racecourse debut just last year, Voikhansky rode Pretty Jewel to a 25-1 success at Salisbury last month, silencing the crowd so that the only noise as he crossed the line was his involuntary cry: “Fucking unbelievable!”
“Well, you only ride your first winner once. We got behind a bit early on but I just let her find her rhythm and she stayed on really strongly. By accident, I’ve finally found the way to ride her.
“For a lot of people, riding is like a ‘bucket list’ kind of thing, they want to be able to say they rode in a race. I’m doing it, and will continue doing it for as long as I can, because I love riding and riding racehorses. And I seem to be improving, at a fairly slow rate. I wish I’d started much younger than I did.”
Voikhansky’s memory is vivid of his first night in Britain, when riding in races was one of many things that could hardly be imagined. “I remember walking with my grandmother in London. We were looking in a butcher’s window and my grandmum took some convincing that it wasn’t all a propaganda exercise, that you could go in and buy this meat and then do it again the next day.
“In Russia, in the late 70s, life was very different. You’d hear a whisper that some Romanian shoes had arrived in a shop, Romanian shoes being much better than Russian shoes. So you’d queue for four hours and when you got in the shop, you wouldn’t stand around asking: ‘Do you have these in a size eight?’ You’d buy as many as you could and then barter with your friends or sell them on the black market.
You’d see bananas or oranges once or twice a year. We weren’t starving, we had enough to eat. But my wife will tell you, I wouldn’t eat cabbage for about 15 or 20 years. England in 1979 seemed like a land of plenty.
“I have friends there and life is a bit better now than it was, from a material point of view. But I wouldn’t be first in the queue to go back there, put it that way.”
Saturday’s racing tips
Newbury
1.20 Nathan (nap) 1.50 Red Mist 2.25 Frontiersman 3.00 Hyde Park 3.35 Librisa Breeze (nb) 4.05 Erdogan 4.40 Boycie 5.15 Mam’selle
Doncaster
1.25 Magical Molly Joe 1.55 Discovered 2.30 Dark Rose Angel 3.05 Nuns Walk 3.40 Venturous 4.10 Johnny Barnes 4.45 Barwell 5.20 Monsieur Glory
Perth
2.00 Knockmaole Boy 2.35 Galveston 3.10 I’m An Izz Wizz 3.45 Mirsaale 4.15 Thorpe 4.50 Apache Jack 5.25 Shillelagh Tiara
Ripon
2.05 Austrian School 2.40 Teruntum Star 3.15 Flying Pursuit 3.50 Lake Volta 4.25 Livella Fella 5.00 Brilliant Vanguard 5.35 Fire Leopard
Newmarket
2.10 Cheval Blanche 2.45 Danielsflyer 3.20 Shabaaby 3.55 Electric Landlady 4.30 Amazing Red 5.05 Star Of The East 5.40 Robin Weathers
Market Rasen
4.55 Dove Mountain 5.30 Pomme 6.00 Miami Present 6.30 Charlie Mon 7.00 Little Pop 7.30 Three Star General 8.00 Hongkong Adventure
Bath
5.10 Burauq 5.40 Avocadeau 6.10 Earthly 6.40 Seamster 7.10 Equilateral 7.40 Fantasy Justifier 8.10 Tojosimbre
