Nick Bampton
Article by Chris Pitt
Basingstoke trainer Jack Holt acquired a reputation for being a trainer of sprinters. In fact, it was once said of him that his idea of a ‘stayer’ was a horse that got a stiff six (furlongs)!
However, he also trained a few jumpers and achieved success at the highest level in 1967 when Stepherion won the George Duller Handicap Hurdle at Cheltenham’s National Hunt Meeting. His jockey that day was 22-year-old Nick Bampton, registering just the fifth winner of his career, all of them having been gained on Stepherion.
Nick was based with Jack Holt throughout his career in racing. His first win on Stepherion, an out-and-out stayer, came in division 2 of the three-mile Green Dragon
Novices’ Hurdle at Bangor-on-Dee on April 16, 1966. He then won three-mile handicap hurdles at Hereford and Ludlow before turning up at Cheltenham in December that year to land the Tetbury Handicap Hurdle, again over three miles.
When the 1967 Cheltenham National Hunt Meeting came round, Stepherion was a 100/9 chance to repeat December’s course and distance victory in the George Duller Handicap Hurdle. Nick made the most of his 7lb claim, sending Stepherion to the front after the sixth flight and staying on strongly to beat Pat McCarron’s mount Chancer by four lengths.
That high-profile success looked sure to launch Nick’s career. Who could possibly have guessed it would be more than seven years before he rode another winner?
But that was indeed the case. After failing to register a win in the 1967/68 season, he relinquished his licence and did not renew it until 1971. Another three-year break followed before he tried again in 1974.
Jack Holt’s juvenile hurdler Say Boy brought Nick back to the winner’s enclosure for the first time since March 1967 when scoring at Leicester on December 4, 1974. Handicap hurdler Henry Bruce, also trained by Holt, gave Nick his last two victories, winning a Fontwell selling hurdle and Lingfield novice riders’ hurdle in February 1975.
Taken at face value, it may seem odd that Nick was able to ride in a novice riders’ (now called conditional jockeys’) race at the age of 30, eight years after he’d won a race at the Cheltenham Festival, but there was no restriction on age in those days – and he only rode a total of eight winners during the whole of his career.
Nick Bampton’s winners in chronological order were:
1. Stepherion, Bangor-on-Dee, April 16, 1966
2. Stepherion, Hereford, May 30, 1966
3. Stepherion, Ludlow, October 19, 1966
4. Stepherion, Cheltenham, December 10, 1966
5. Stepherion, Cheltenham, March 15, 1967
6. Say Boy Leicester, December 4, 1974
7. Henry Bruce, Fontwell, February 5, 1975
8. Henry Bruce, Lingfield, February 27, 1975.
