Philip Davies

Philip Davies

Article by Alan Trout

Welshman Philip Davies rode two winners over jumps, one on either side of the 20th century.

His first success was at the Tivyside Hunt meeting on April 5, 1899, when at the end of three and a half miles his mount, Tit Willow, and Merry Boy, ridden by Richard Smith (who had won the first race on the card), could not be separated for the Tivyside Maiden Chase. A dead heat was announced and the respective owners agreed to divide the stakes rather than subject their horses to a run-off, which was often the case in those days. 

The four-year-old Tit Willow was owned by leading Welsh amateur rider Bob Harries. Philip kept the ride but fell on their only other start, at the Pembrokeshire Hunt meeting six days later.   

He had a few rides in 1900, including when finishing third on Roman in the Licensed Victuallers’ Steeplechase at the Pembrokeshire Hunt meeting. On April 11 the following year, at the same course on the same horse in the same race, he achieved his second success when Roman, despite falling and being remounted, came home a comfortable winner, beating Uitlander by six lengths.  

Just six days later at the Pembroke Hunt meeting (there were separate racecourses called Pembroke Hunt and Pembrokeshire Hunt at the time), Philip rode Roman twice in one afternoon and was placed on both occasions. The gelding never won another race.

Philip’s final ride was on another of Bob Harries’s horses, Kitsey Witsey, a faller in the Llandawke Steeplechase at the Carmarthen Hunt meeting on January 21, 1903. It is not known whether that fall brought Philip Davies’s career to a premature end.