Brian Ellison

One of the sport’s journeymen jump jockeys, Brian Ellison was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on June 28 1952. One of eight children, his father was a Tyneside shipbuilder, while his mother worked as a cleaner in a Newcastle hospital.

In his early years, Brian’s passion was football. He was a talented force on the pitch but at just 4ft 9ins was considered far too small to make it as a professional footballer. Instead he began to think about becoming a jockey. Aged 14, he sat on a horse for the first time. He left school a year later to pursue a career in horse racing. He started out with Jimmy FitzGerald and, at the age of 17, took out a conditional jockey’s licence. He rode his first winner on just his second ride in public, aboard Ponda Rock in a Hexham selling hurdle on October 6, 1970.

He rode mostly moderate horses during his 20-years as a National Hunt jockey. The best of them was Tex, who gave him the highlight of his riding career when winning the Harrison Construction Handicap Chase at Worcester in September 1976. On that occasion he beat the spectacular two-mile chaser Tingle Creek, albeit in receipt of no less than 40lbs.

In his final year of race-riding Brian acquired his trainer’s licence, relinquishing his jockey’s licence in 1989 and joining the training ranks ‘proper’. The training side was to prove his forte, and he has gone on to became one of the leading dual-purpose racehorse trainers in Britain, based at Spring Cottage Stables in Malton, North Yorkshire.