Farmer and amateur rider John Bickerton was born in 1908. He obtained his first trainer’s permit in 1953 and trained for himself and his wife Blanche, whom he had married in 1936. His racing colours were turquoise, pink diamonds and sleeves, black cap. Based at Rothersthorpe, in Northamptonshire, his best horse was the staying hurdler Coeur de Main.
He began riding in point-to-points in 1930 but had to wait until after the war for his first winner under National Hunt rules. That came on Skylight in the Adjacent Hunts’ Maiden Chase at the Woodland Pytchley Hunt Bona Fide meeting at Dingley on April 17, 1947. His first at a ‘recognised’ National Hunt course came on Climber in a Towcester hunter chase on Easter Monday 1948. The following year he rode another of his hunter chasers, Clare Dragoon, to victory at Folkestone’s United Hunts’ Meeting.
With Towcester being his local racecourse, he regularly ran horses at the Northamptonshire track’s Easter meeting, notably in the three-mile Caldecote Long Distance Handicap Hurdle. He trained and rode his wife’s horse Gros Chou II to win it in 1953 and again in 1955. At the end of the 1956/57 season, he acquired a horse named Coeur de Main and won the race again in 1958. They were runners up in 1959 and in 1960 (to the useful Duke of York), third in 1962 and second (to Sartorius) in 1963.
Alongside his Towcester Easter exploits, Coeur de Main won hurdle races at Leicester, Wolverhampton and Stratford. John rode him in 55 races over eight seasons and only once did he fail to complete the course. They teamed up for the final time on Easter Monday 1965 in Towcester’s traditional long-distance handicap hurdle race, named that year the Felix Fenston Challenge Cup (right). By then, Coeur de Main was 15 years old, nor was his rider in the first flush of youth. However, they duly completed the course, albeit last of the eleven finishers. It was a fitting way to bow out.
John Bickerton’s winners were, in chronological order:
1. Skylight, Woodland Pytchley Hunt (Bona Fide), April 17, 1947
2. Climber, Towcester, March 27, 1948
3. Clare Dragoon, Folkestone, May 2, 1949
4. Gros Chou II, Towcester, April 4, 1953
5. Gros Chou II, Doncaster, February 5, 1955
6. Gros Chou II, Towcester, April 9, 1955
7. Coeur de Main, Towcester, April 7, 1958
8. Waylock, West Norfolk Hunt (Fakenham), May 28, 1960
9. Coeur de Main, Leicester, November 28, 1960
10. Coeur de Main, Wolverhampton, December 26, 1960
11. Coeur de Main, Stratford-on-Avon, March 9, 1962
