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Photo courtesy Mary Pitt
An average of just five winners a year is hardly the stuff of dreams, but it was enough to keep Billy Worthington going over twenty-four seasons.Forced out of the game in 2002 with just 116 victories - 35 of which had come in his final two seasons - he had been, in every sense, a journeyman jockey.
Born in Coventry on 7 December 1960, William Martin Worthington spent almost his entire career riding for the stable of Market Rasen-based Michael Chapman.
Graduating from gymkhanas and showjumping, he became apprenticed to John Hill at Barnstaple and was first seen riding in public at Kempton.
When Pat Buckley (of Ayala fame), who was then Hill's assistant trainer, decided to join Nick Vigors, he encouraged Billy to follow him.
This turned out a good move for young Billy: his first ride for Vigors, Piercing Note at Pontefract on 19 April, 1978, turned out to be his first winner.
Then Nature followed its natural course and Billy's weight shot up.
Vigors advised him to try his luck over the sticks which he did: Billy spent two years with Nicky Henderson before becoming first jockey to Lord Leigh, a permit holder. That came to nothing as Leigh, just eight weeks later, decided to give up training.
A three year spell with Ken Bridgewater at Knowle followed after which Billy decided to ride as a freelance.
Around about this time, he ran into Michael Chapman who was looking for a jockey to ride a dodgy chaser called Tadbir in a novices' chase. All the other jockeys had refused to ride it so Chapman asked Billy.
Billy accepted the ride and got round safely. Subsequently, a working relationship between the two men was formed.
Billy had just one ride in the Grand National, in 1992, when riding the ill-named 250/1 outsider Why So Hasty.
Belying its odds, Why So Hasty ran brilliantly up to the Canal Turn second time round where he burst a blood vessel and was pulled up.
Billy took his first really bad fall just three days later.
Ridng Dry GIn at Southwell (Tuesday, Apil 7, 1992) in the Huntsmans Solicitors Handicap Chase, Billy came down at the third last when leading.
The number of injuries sustained in that one fall beggars belief; Billy broke seven ribs, punctured a lung, punctured his spleen, broke his pelvis in three places, broke vertebrae in his neck,dislocated one shoulder and broke the other.
Not surprisingly, the next eight weeks were spent recovering in hospital before going on holiday to Gran Canaria to further recuperate.
The fall would have put most jockeys out of the saddle for good, but Billy was made of sterner stuff.
Three months later, he was back riding.
Incredibly, Billy went on to become leading jockey at Market Rasen, riding there more often than any other jockey.
It was in the 2000-01 season that his luck really turned as he notched a personal best of eighteen winners. The following season he cemented his progress with a further seventeen, including Alvaro, which won a novice hurdle at Cartmel in August.
Billy didn't know it at the time, but this was to prove to be his last winner.
Five days later, Saturday, August 31, Billy - then forty-one -
climbed aboard Terdad to contest the Lincinsure Handicap Hurdle at his favourite track, Market Rasen.
Terdad fell. Billy, thrown head first into the ground, suffered a broken neck.
This time there was no coming back.
He was taken to Lincoln Hospital before being transferred to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham where his neck was put in a moulded collar.
Eventually, having been moved on to London's Wellington Hospital, he received reconstructive surgery, paid for by the Injured Jockeys' Fund.
Whilst the operation undoubtedly aided his recovery, Billy never sufficiently recovered enough to return as a jockey.
Yet his name on the racecourse lived on as his son William (riding as W.A.Worthington) took to the saddle.
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