Killed in Heathrow Airport plane crash
Article by Chris Pitt
John Frederick Noel Bunker was a successful apprentice jockey in the early 1950s. Born in Ilford on Christmas Day 1932, the son of a motor driver, he joined Captain Cecil Boyd-Rochfort’s stable in Newmarket aged 14 but didn’t enjoy life there and returned home after a few weeks.
Six months later he was accepted as an apprentice at Staff Ingham’s yard in Epsom. He rode his first winner on Ingham’s Beladorius in the Chatham Handicap at Folkestone on July 3, 1951, and went on to have four more victories that season.
In 1952 he rode 25 winners from 99 rides including a big race triumph on the Harold Wallington-trained Mid View in Redcar’s Zetland Gold Cup.
He rode seven winners the following season but struggled after coming out of his time in 1954 when he scored just four times.
Having drawn a blank in 1955, he rode two winners in 1956: Curious Kid at Hurst Park on May 22, and Golden Valley at Windsor on June 30, both for Epsom trainer Tommy Carey.
His last two winners came in 1957, both on another Carey-trained horse called Tom Pom, at Newbury on April 12, and Newmarket on May 16.
He relinquished his jockey’s licence in 1958 and subsequently became a ‘flying groom’, travelling racehorses across the world.
On July 3, 1968, the seventeenth anniversary of the day he rode his first winner, John Bunker, by then aged 35, was killed in a plane crash at Heathrow Airport along with fellow grooms John Gordon Smith and William Montgomery, plus eight racehorses.
He left a widow and four children.
