Tim Brookshaw

Champion National Hunt jockey Tim Brookshaw was born at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, on 25 March 1929. Though christened Stanley James, he was always known as Tim. 

In 1935 his parents Stanley and Mabel moved to Aychley Farm, between Whitchurch and Market Drayton. That is where Tim, together with his elder brother Peter, sister Mary and youngest brother Tony all learned to ride. 

Peter and Tim were highly successful in gymkhanas. Immediately after the war they began riding in point-to-points, their father taking out a trainers’ permit to set them on their way. 

Tim’s first winning ride was on a 14-year-old gelding called Aychley – named after the Brookshaw’s farm – who humped 14 stone to victory in the Adjacent Hunts’ Heavy-weight Chase at the Cheshire Hounds Hunt bona fide meeting on Saturday, April 26, 1947.  A ‘bona fide’ meeting was effectively a point-to-point held under National Hunt rules. They differed from point-to-points only in that a charge could be made for admission. The results were published in the official form books, although they did not count for wins under ‘proper’ National Hunt rules. Bona fide meetings ended in 1948, becoming ordinary point-to-points from thereon.  

Thus, Tim’s first official winner under National Hunt rules was on Ike II, owned and trained by permit holder Tom Nunneley, in the Foxhunters’ Open Chase at Woore on Thursday, 13 May 1948. 

The following season Tim became associated with George Owen’s Tarporley stable, riding Owen’s handicap chaser Resurgent to victory at Wolverhampton’s Christmas meeting and following up at Birmingham in January. April brought four more wins. He was on his way. 

Having ridden out his claim as an amateur – back in those days a jockey only needed to ride 15 winners to do so – Tim turned professional in October 1950.

He rode Dog Watch in the 1951 Grand National, a dramatic race in which one-third of the 36 runners fell or were brought down at the first fence. The catalogue of disaster continued and the field had been whittled down to just seven by the time they came back onto the ‘racecourse proper’ for the first time. Dog Watch was among the septet, as was Owen’s other runner Russian Hero, the 1949 winner, but both departed at the Chair, Dog Watch half refusing and depositing Tim on the landing side ahead of his horse. 

Tim was reunited with Dog Watch to win the Godfrey Long Handicap Chase at Wetherby’s Whitsun fixture and he finished his first season as a professional with a respectable score of 29 victories. 

On the first day of Liverpool’s 1951 November meeting, Tim won the £1,000 Molyneux Chase over the Grand National fences on 100-6 chance Royal Stuart, scraping home by a short-head from the previous year’s winner Possible. On the third day of the meeting, Tim landed the November Handicap Hurdle on the topweight Chasseur. He went on to end that 1951/52 campaign with 24 winners, 17 of them trained by Owen. 

While Owen had supplied the majority of Tim’s winners, he was gradually gaining favour with a number of other trainers, among them Fred Rimell. Tim rode his first winner for Rimell on the giant six-year-old Gay Monarch II, part-owned by his father Stanley Brookshaw, at Windsor on 12 December 1952. The following month, Tim won on another of his father’s horses, Holly Bank, also trained by Rimell. Holly Bank’s victory in Birmingham’s Packington Chase heralded the start of a career that united the Brookshaw family. All three brothers would win races on that horse; he’d carry one of them round in a Grand National; and their father would even name a bungalow after him.  

The following season season Tim rode another Rimell-trained horse, Womage, to win the Golden Miller Handicap Chase at Cheltenham. That victory went some way to cementing the partnership between jockey and trainer, for Rimell was responsible for more than half of Tim’s total of 25 winners in the 1954/55 season, whereas Owen supplied just one.  The highlight of that season came when winning the Golden Miller Chase for the second year running, this time on Holly Bank.

Tim’s summer commitments at his farm had always taken precedence over heading off to Devon for the traditional start of the jumps season. He didn’t normally get going until October. His eight wins by the end of September of the 1957/58 campaign had been by far his fastest start. But the 1958/59 season would be different.

He was in winning action at Newton Abbot on the very first day of the season, scoring on the Basil Foster-trained chaser Joe Holland. He rode nine winners that month and by the end of September he’d had 26, putting him well ahead of the reigning champion, Fred Winter. Nor did the pace slacken when the ‘jumps season proper’ got under way in October. Eleven more wins that month kept the momentum going. In November he rode Fred Rimell’s on Oasis to win Liverpool’s Molyneux Chase, his second victory in the race. The significance of this particular event is that it was the first Aintree race shown live on BBC television. 

The Rimell-Brookshaw association was on the crest of a wave. The Worcestershire trainer and Shropshire farmer-jockey had achieved 25 and 46 winners respectively by the end of November. By the end of the year Tim had 49 winners on the board.

On Saturday 21 March 1959 he famously finished second on Wyndburgh in the 1959 Grand National, having ridden the last eight fences with no irons after one of the stirrup irons had snapped on landing over Becher’s. Had that not happened, there is little doubt that Wyndburgh would have won instead of being beaten just half a length by Oxo. 

Tim was up milking the cows as usual the next morning, commenting nothing more than he felt “a bit stiff”. He quickly put the disappointment of Aintree behind him and focused on winning the jockey’s title. He rode three winners over Manchester’s two-day Easter meeting, including the valuable Lancashire Chase on 1956 Grand National hero E.S.B. 

By the first day of April, the battle for the jockeys’ championship concerned just two: Fred Winter and Tim Brookshaw. Tim had a lead of three – 77 against 74 –and the contest looked like going down to the wire. However, three days later, Winter had a fall at Leicester and fractured his skull. His season was over.  

By the start of May Tim had ridden 82 winners. His 83rd came on Fred Rimell’s selling hurdler Chauffer at Taunton. Then, just half an hour later, he broke his right leg in a fall. Like Winter, his season was over but he was far enough clear to ensure that nobody could derail his bid to become champion jockey for the 1958/50 season.

He returned to action in November, only to fracture his right ankle in a fall at Liverpool the following month. It was the last day of March 1960 before he returned. By the end of what had been a forgettable season he’d managed to salvage 30 winners, putting him in eleventh place in the jockeys’ table, well behind the newly-crowned champion Stan Mellor.  

Tim’s best season numerically was in 1960/61 when he won 90 races, yet he did not end up as champion jockey. It would have been enough to secure any of the previous seven seasons’ champion jockey titles, but it fell well short of the 118 accrued by Stan Mellor, who became only the third jockey to ride a century of winners in a National Hunt season.  

By comparison, Tim found the 1961/62 campaign a struggle, amassing only 37 winners, but they included one on the best horse he ever rode, Mill House. Tim partnered him just the once, when winning the Ledbury Handicap Chase at Cheltenham in April. 

He ended the weather-disrupted 1962/63 season with a score of 36, placing him sixth in the jockeys’ table. The campaign included three high-profile victories: Eternal in Liverpool’s Grand Sefton Chase; his first Cheltenham National Hunt Meeting success on Happy Arthur in the George Duller Handicap Hurdle; and the 1963 Scottish Grand National on Pappageno’s Cottage. 

Tim made a bright start to 1963/64. By the end of November he had ridden 33 winners, only three short of his score for the whole of the previous season. On Tuesday 3 December he won a Nottingham novices’ chase on Bold Biri. It was the 555th winner of his career. It was to be his last. 

The following day he rode a six-year-old mare called Lucky Dora in the Holly Handicap Hurde at Liverpool. At the fifth flight she ran out and crashed through the wing, falling and breaking her neck. Tim landed on his face and chest, and his legs jack-knifed over his back. He had suffered a spinal injury so severe that he was left to a large degree paralysed with, at the time, no official compensation for such injuries. 

Just three months later, again at Aintree, Paddy Farrell fell headlong while jumping the Chair on Border Flight in the 1964 Grand National. He, too, was paralysed, his injuries being even more severe than Tim’s.

As a direct result of those two accidents, a fund was set up by the eminent journalist and amateur rider John Lawrence, later to become known as Lord Oaksey. Initially called the Farrell-Brookshaw Fund, it became the catalyst for a wider remit of the Injured National Hunt Jockeys Fund and, later, on the basis that Flat jockeys also get hurt, the all-embracing Injured Jockeys Fund. 

Told by his doctors that he would never walk again, Tim triumphed over adversity to return to the saddle and to become a successful trainer. His first winner in that sphere was Dufton Pike at Wolverhampton on 6 March 1967. 

Remarkably, on Wednesday 6 April 1977 he rode in a charity race at Navan – the Veterans’ Private Sweepstakes – in aid of the Kilkenny Sheltered workshops for mentally handicap people. His fellow competitors included Fred Winter, Martin Molony, Aubrey Brabazon, Jack Dowdeswell, Pat Taaffe, Willie Robinson and Lord Oaksey. Fred Winter won it. Tim’s mount, Beechy Boy, finished ninth of the 23 runners.

On the morning of Monday 2 November 1981, the stable staff at Tim’s Lostford Manor Stables saddled their horses in preparation for taking them out on the gallops. One was being somewhat livelier than the others. Tim decided he’d deal with that one.

He saddled the horse up and took him up the road for a steady gallop in the field. The horse was bucking and kicking, misbehaving and proving difficult to handle. A lifetime of experience had taught Tim how to deal with that. Except that this time the horse reared up, then stumbled and fell as he came back down, firing Tim over his head. Instinctively, he would not let go of the reins. As he lay on the ground, the horse got to his feet and kicked him in the back of the neck.

He was taken to Gobowen Orthopaedic Hospital, near Oswestry, where he was found to have two broken bones in his neck. For the second time in his life, he was paralysed. But this time, there was no reprieve. 

Tim Brookshaw died in hospital shortly after 6.00am on Sunday 8 November 1981. He was 52.

Biggest wins:

1951: Molyneux Chase - Royal Stuart 

1958: Molyneux Chase - Oasis

1959: Lancashire Chase - E.S.B.

1959: Champion Hurdle Trial - Tokoroa

1961: Worcester Royal Porcelain Chase - Swordsman Brown

1962: Grand Sefton Chase  - Eternal

1963: George Duller Handicap Hurdle - Happy Arthur

1963: Scottish Grand National - Pappageno's Cottage