Rodney Boult

Rodney Boult

Article by Chris Pitt

The name of Rodney Boult, who died at his home in Whitsbury in October 2015, will always be remembered for his association with Desert Orchid.

Rodney had played an integral part in David Elsworth’s training operation for the better part of twenty-five years before retiring on Christmas Eve 2005. Elsworth, not known for lavishing indiscriminate praise on people, was adamant that without Rodney, Desert Orchid would never have attained the heights that led to his near legendary status as the nation’s favourite racehorse.

“He had a bigger influence on Desert Orchid than anybody – including myself – and he managed to harness the horse’s energies and get his head right,” Elsworth said at the time of Rodney’s retirement. It wasn’t just Desert Orchid though, for the likes of Barnbrook Again, Oh So Risky, Dead Certain, In The Groove and Indian Ridge were all ridden and handled by Rodney Boult.

Less well-known, however, is that he also rode as a National Hunt jockey between 1957 and 1962, amassing a total of 18 winners during that time, along with one on the Flat. 

Rodney George Boult was born of March 22, 1935 and served his apprenticeship with Major Fred Sneyd and then Marcus Marsh at Newmarket, during which looked after Marsh’s 1952 Derby winner Tulyar. He had a few rides on the Flat but weight determined that his future lay over jumps.

He joined Doug Mark’s stable at Winkfield, near Ascot, which is where he first met David Elsworth, both of them being young claiming jockeys at the time. Rodney rode his first two winners on Marks’ grey selling hurdler Monopoly, firstly at Hurst Park on Saturday, December 14, 1957 and then at Cheltenham on December 30. Monopoly was bought by top amateur rider John Lawrence at the auction following the Cheltenham win and packed off to Bob Turnell’s yard. Rodney did, though, have a third winner that season, on another Marks-trained selling hurdler named Duet Leader at Kempton on March 1, 1958. He rode three more winners the following season.

Rodney’s sole success on the Flat came at Hurst Park on July 25, 1958, when the three-year-old Ulanova “made all the running, cleverly” (according to the Sporting Chronicle Racing Up-To-Date form book) and won the Claremont Maiden Plate by a neck. Top jockeys Scobie Breasley, Harry Carr and Joe Mercer finished third, fourth and fifth. 

He continued to ride for Doug Marks, partnering six winners during the 1950/60 campaign. They included the four-year-old hurdler Arend-Roland, on whom Rodney won at Nottingham in February 1960 and subsequently finished fifth in that year’s Triumph Hurdle, then run at Hurst Park. Another useful juvenile hurdler with whom Rodney was associated was the Basil Foster-trained Carrigeen Duff, winning at Sandown and Lingfield on consecutive Saturdays in February.

He moved to Lewes trainer Tom Masson in 1960. Masson’s four-year-old hurdler Dali was responsible for all three of Rodney’s wins the following season, notching up a hat-trick of victories during January 1961, two at Plumpton, one at Lingfield.

He rode three more winners in his final season as a jockey, 1961/62, the first on Doug Marks’ Clever Cobbler at Fontwell on September 30; the second on Tom Masson’s Luminarch at Plumpton on November 20; the third on his old friend Carrigeen Duff in the Farringdon Handicap Hurdle at Newbury on Saturday, January 20, 1962.

Realising that he was never going to make the big time as a jockey and conscious of the need to be earning a regular income, he went home to Liverpool and ran a nightclub for his father. However, after six years doing that, the lure of the racing world proved too strong and drew him back, initially with Dick Hern, followed by Jakie Astor and then with John Dunlop, for whom he looked after the 1978 Derby winner Shirley Heights. But it was his role as David Elsworth’s head lad for which Rodney Boult will always be best remembered. He’d arrived at around the same time as Desert Orchid and became his regular work rider. 

When Elsworth relocated his training operation to Newmarket early in 2006, Rodney decided against making the move and elected instead to retire to his cottage in Whitsbury, where he passed away on October 18, 2015 aged 79. He was buried at St Leonard’s Church in Whitsbury.