If the length of a journey adds to the enjoyment when you arrive, no-one at Kempton Park will feel quite as cheerful as Noel Fehily when the field goes to post for the King George VI Chase on Friday. Fehily will know that he has finally made it to the top of his profession because he was there 12 months ago too, riding Silviniaco Conti to victory in the biggest race of the Christmas programme. If the first time around is a foot in the door, the second is the moment when you can start to feel that you belong.
Fehily has been a jockey since the 1990s but for the first decade and more of his career he could not rise beyond the crowded second tier of the sport, where dozens of riders compete furiously to find one horse or an up-and-coming trainer to carry them towards the Grade One events.
Even when he did work an opening, injuries frequently intervened just as his momentum was starting to build. Only now, as Fehily heads towards his 40th birthday, having entered his final year as a thirty-something on Christmas Eve, is he becoming a familiar figure in the most prestigious races.
Silviniaco Conti, who is likely to start favourite to win his second King George, is the horse who has taken him there, though the chaser has, like his jockey, crept in with little announcement. The eight-year-old has already won four Grade One steeplechases, the last three of those with Fehily in the saddle, which is one more than the much-admired Denman recorded in his career.
As yet, though, Silviniaco Conti has not connected with the racing public in quite the same way, something that a second win in the King George could help to address.
“Some horses catch the public imagination more than others, but I think he’s certainly getting there,” Fehily said this week. “He’s not flashy, he just does what he has to do, but he stays very well and he’s a very good jumper, so he’s got a lot of things going for him. He’s a very good horse and winning back-to-back King Georges would prove that. Then he’d be a horse that people are following a lot.”
Fehily is not flashy either, just a very natural, intelligent horseman who can draw on a wealth of experience in every situation and put it to good use. Twelve months ago, he sat and waited as Cue Card, the King George favourite, turned for home with a clear advantage, confident that Silviniaco Conti’s stamina would wear down the leader. However this year’s race unfolds, Fehily will have a plan to match.
“You have to ride the horse to suit the horse, not to suit the occasion,” he says. “It’s just not making mistakes more than anything and if you’re on the best horse, you’ll win. Jockeys need to just not make mistakes or get into trouble, try to do the good things right and keep it simple.
“You have to go in with a Plan A, B and C and a Plan Z as well. You have to think of every scenario and just go through the race in your mind as much as you can. I’ll think about it plenty the night before and plenty on the morning and come up with a plan and then probably change it as soon as we begin.”
Just a couple of decades ago, someone of Fehily’s age would have been seen as a creaking veteran of the weighing room, clinging to the final shreds of his riding career. Peter Scudamore retired at 34 and John Francome at 32, but modern jump jockeys are a different breed to many of their predecessors. Fehily is two years younger than Tony McCoy and intends to make the most of his long-delayed emergence at the top of the game.
“I’m enjoying it more than ever now and as long as I’m enjoying it, I’ll keep going,” he says. “I think as you get older, experience really helps. When you’re younger, I think that maybe you stress about it a bit more.
“Jockeys are a lot fitter now and we’re looked after a lot better. Every racecourse has a physio now and there’s places where we can go to have physio and get looked after. Things like that have brought the game forward for jockeys and that’s why they’re riding longer, because they’re fitter and looked after better. Gone are the days when you could go drinking at weekends and things like that.
“It’s the same for every sport, footballers used to have a fag at half-time. Those days are gone. Sports move on and it’s the same with jockeys and racing. I suppose jockeys are more professional.
“Different things were more acceptable in the old days, where they’re not now. I’m getting towards the senior ranks in the weighing room but I think I’m riding better than ever.”
Fehily has enjoyed an uninterrupted run without a significant injury for a season and a half, following several long breaks from the saddle. That, too, will help to send him to Kempton in a positive and confident frame of mind.
“Every jump jockey has bad injuries, but I had three years of it, one after another,” he says. “They weren’t serious injuries, they were just really slow to heal, like ligaments and tendons. There were some broken bones as well, but they kept me out, one after the other.
“You learn to cope with it and, as you get older, you appreciate the really good winners more.
“When you’re younger, you probably don’t feel it as much, but you learn with experience how hard the big races are to win. When you do, you don’t half appreciate them.”
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