Jim Edmunds was born in Bargoed, 15 miles north of Cardiff, on March 19, 1922. His father worked down the mines and in racing stables at the same time. Jim began his racing career as a 5st 10lb apprentice with Norah Wilmot at Binfield Grove, near Bracknell. He then served a four-year apprenticeship with Fred Templeman at Lambourn before joining the Navy for five years when war broke out. It was during his war service that he met his future wife, Irene, who was then serving in the Wrens.
He came back into racing and joined Jack Lea’s Wythall stable, on the outskirts of Birmingham, had a brief spell with Syd Mercer at Lapworth, then returned to Lea. His first winner came on Lea’s 14-year-old selling chaser Clonee Friar at Wolverhampton on 22 January 1951.
In 1952 he rode Punchestown Star in the Molyneux Chase over part of the Grand National course, completing the course safely in ninth place. Jim recalled that the horsebox broke down on its way to Liverpool. They arrived in the nick of time and he had no chance to walk the course beforehand. Three of his four winners that season were for Beoley (Redditch) trainer Dick Langley, including twice on Twenty Twenty at Warwick and Wolverhampton.
But undoubtedly the best he rode during his six years as a jump jockey was Ormen, who West Midlands bookmaker Geoff Gilbert – owner of champion sprinter Right Boy – had bought for just £300. In a ten-week period between December 1953 and February 1954 Jim rode Ormen to victory at Uttoxeter, Wolverhampton, Haydock and Ludlow and finished second to a decent horse of Fulke Walwyn’s in the Elmdon Hurdle at Birmingham.
Jim’s most successful campaign was 1953/54 when he rode 11 winners from 98 rides. Ormen supplied four of them, with another three coming from Claudius, who he recalled as being “one of the smallest horses I ever rode over fences.” His final winner was Galloway Lad at Newton Abbot on 1 August 1955. Eight weeks later his riding career was ended by a crashing fall on Manorway at Ludlow. A smashed shoulder broke inwards and put him in and out of hospital for fifteen long months.
Geoff Gilbert then asked him to find a place to train. He found Woods Farm in Bills Lane, Shirley, again on the outskirts of Birmingham. The name was duly changed to Ormen House Stables and Jim began training there in 1956. Ormen was the stable star but was forever lumbered with top-weight in handicap hurdles. During the 1956/57 season he finished second four times, third twice and fourth once without winning.
One of Jim’s winners was selling hurdler Trafalgar Square, whose owner-rider Robin Pryke sold bananas at Birmingham market and was known as ‘The Banana King’. In 1961 Pryke won on Trafalgar Square at Uttoxeter on Easter Monday and at Hereford on Whit Monday, then at Newton Abbot at the end of August he won an amateur riders’ hurdle on him and completed a double on another of Jim’s horses, a novice chaser named Kostacky.
The year 1961 was a busy one for Jim. He moved base to Pryke’s Fulford Stables at Earlswood, Solihull, and in June of that year bought a couple of horses out of sellers on the Flat. Changing State cost him 520gns after winning a one-mile Nottingham seller for Harvey Leader. The Staff Ingham-trained Fair Enchantment cost 620gns following his win in a two-year-old seller at Worcester.
Changing State recouped most of his purchase price when winning at Windsor a few weeks later, and won a one-mile Wolverhampton handicap in 1962, while Fair Enchantment also won at Wolverhampton. Both horses were ridden by a talented young jockey named Michael Hayes, who was to lose his life in a car accident in 1966. Jim’s son Gary finished second twice on Changing State and twice more on Fair Enchantment during the 1963 season, by which time the Edmunds training operation was based at Houndsfield Farm, Wythall, where it would remain for over 20 years.
Among Jim’s best performers was Badedas, who came within a short-head of making a winning two-year-old debut at Birmingham in 1965, the first of several frustratingly close calls. Even the might of Lester Piggott couldn’t quite get him home at Glorious Goodwood two years later, when he failed by a neck to catch Scobie Breasley’s mount Andron. An objection to the winner on grounds of bumping and boring was overruled. Partnered by Terry Biddlecombe, Badedas won a pair of novice hurdles in September 1967 but was then sent to race in France. He eventually returned to Jim who stood the horse as a stallion. His produce included Sadedab (Badedas spelt backwards) which Jim trained to win at Wolverhampton and Haydock in 1977 and at Warwick the following year when partnered by a 5lb claimer named Kevin Darley.
By the start of the 1980s the flow of winners had become a trickle. Sweet Mandy was his last when landing a Wolverhampton novices’ chase in the hands of Robert Mann on 2 November 1983. She looked sure to win again on her next start at Cheltenham twelve days later, only to slip and fall three out.
Jim relinquished his licence in the mid-1980s. Houndsfield Farm was duly sold to Bovis Homes for development. He moved to nearby Wythall and had a horse, Caliban, in training with Ian Williams.
One of the lesser lights during his long training career was a horse named Anne Willats, but therein lies an unusual tale. In 1968, when racing in Hong Kong was nothing like as developed or international as it is now, Alex Siy-Tan Wong, a 22-year-old accountancy student at Aston University, launched a one-man Oriental invasion of British racing.
Recalled Jim: “Alex came to see me one day and asked if he could ride out. He was brave; he’d ride anything. We got him good enough to get him a licence and I picked him up a horse, Anne Willats, for £120.”
After being badly left in the stalls in an amateur riders’ race at Redcar first time out, Siy-Tan Wong and Anne Willats lined up three months later at Folkestone. Alas, there was to be no fairytale ending, for they trailed in last of nine.
After partnering the horse once over hurdles at Worcester, Siy-Tan Wong returned to Hong Kong. One thing is for sure – if he’s still involved in racing there now, he’ll have found the facilities at Happy Valley and Sha Tin in a totally different league to those at Redcar and Folkestone!