Article by Chris Pitt
Northern Flat jockey Ted Carter’s riding career spanned from 1947 to 1975, during which he rode 114 winners, including some over hurdles, before taking up training in 1977.
Edward Carter, always known as Ted, was born in Manchester on May 24, 1933. The son of a farmer, his early experience in the hunting field and in gymkhanas in Lancashire and Cheshire stood him in good stead for a life in racing. He duly became apprenticed to Captain Charles Elsey at Highfield Stables, Malton, the site of the old Malton Racecourse. When he rode his first winner on 20/1 shot Brelades Bay in an apprentices’ handicap at Liverpool on Wednesday, November 9, 1949, he weighed only 4st 6lb.
He amassed 21 winners as an apprentice, by far the most important of which was the 1951 Ebor Handicap on Bob for Captain Elsey. He looked all set for a successful career as a jockey when he was called up for National Service in 1954. When he returned he had put on weight. Nonetheless, he became a fully-fledged professional Flat jockey in 1956. He was very much a journeyman jockey and rode mainly as a freelance to begin with, before going on to enjoy long associations with several Yorkshire trainers including Pat Rohan, Bill Watts and Frank Carr.
Ted also rode over hurdles between 1960 and 1964, winning ten races in that sphere. He achieved his first success under National Hunt rules on Frank Carr’s four-year-old Dominator in a maiden hurdle at Southwell on March 12, 1962. He rode six winners during the 1962/63 campaign including back-to-back successes on Pat Rohan’s White Smoke at Doncaster and Haydock, and the Bill Watts-trained Billy Buck at Southwell.
On October 11, 1963, he married Rosemary Jane Woodings; she gave him three daughters, Wendy Jane, Tracey Anne and Christine.
He left racing altogether at one time to run a café in Bridlington but eventually returned to race riding.
Ted achieved a career best total of 13 winners on the Flat in 1966, following which he rode eight in each of the next three seasons. He rated Frank Carr’s miler Kamundu, on whom he won a good £1,000 handicap at Newmarket on November 1, 1969, as the best he rode,
His began to wind down his riding in the early 1970s, his last winner being on Frank Carr’s three-year-old Baker Brown in the Goat Fell Maiden Stakes at Ayr on July 13, 1974. He retired the following year and became assistant trainer to Frank Carr at Whitewall Stables, Norton, near Malton.
In 1977 Ted took over the licence at Whitewall and went on to train there for the next ten years with a mixed string of around two dozen horses. His best was probably Megans Boy, whose victories included the A S Williams Group Handicap Chase at Aintree’s 1981 Grand National meeting. Megans Boy also finished third in Ritz Club Handicap Chase at that year’s Cheltenham Festival, second to Bregawn in the 1982 Great Yorkshire Chase and fourth in the 1982 Hennessy Gold Cup.
Other good jumpers trained by Ted included Rimondo, who won races over hurdles and was placed in Aintree’s Monksfield Hurdle and Haydock’s Embassy Hurdle; and the black gelding Eborneezersdouble, whose eight victories over fences and hurdles included an Embassy Premier Chase qualifier at Wetherby and the Ladbroke Racing Handicap Chase at Teesside Park in December 1977, when ridden by Jonjo O’Neill.
Ted Carter relinquished his trainer’s licence in 1987, thus bringing to an end a 40-year career as a jockey and trainer.
Ted Carter died in October 2016, aged 83.
