David Chinn

Midlands-based jump jockey David John Chinn had a childhood ambition to become a jockey and began his racing career at David Nicholson’s yard in 1978. 

Starting out as a conditional jockey he had his first ride at Lingfield Park on October 12, 1979, when One Tree Hill was among a field of 23 taking part in the Ken Butler Wines Stakes National Hunt Flat Race. They finished unplaced, and David had to wait until the last race on the final day of the 1981/82 season to open his account. His mount, Prince Helen, trained by Peter Harris, stayed on well to beat Parcelstown by a length and a half to land the appropriately-named Last Chance Opportunity Novices’ Hurdle.   

Most of his rides came from Midlands trainers Ken Bridgwater, Peter Pritchard and John Spearing. Winners were hard to find. Having drawn a blank in the 1982/83 campaign, he recorded his best score with five in the 1983/84 season. He had two winners in each of the next three seasons.  

He won three races at Hereford on the chaser Ballybutler, although one of those was a match in which his sole rival fell at the last fence. 

He hit the headlines for the wrong reason when his right ear was ripped off in a horrific fall at Nottingham on January 21, 1986. The accident happened on one of Jimmy Cosgrave’s novice hurdlers, Lady Oryx, who fell at the fifth flight. The horse kicked David’s crash helmet, twisting it around and slicing his ear off. Thankfully the wonders of modern surgery enabled the doctors at Nottingham General Hospital to sew the ear back on, leaving his hearing as good as ever.

Petere Pritchard supplied David’s last four winners, the last of them being his biggest, when the 12-year-old Woodlands Lad got up close home to take the Hawthorn Memorial Challenge Cup Handicap Chase at Uttoxeter on March 21, 1987, beating Just For The Crack by a length. 

His career was one of riding bad and often dangerous horses around the ‘gaffs’. In 1991, aged 26, having not ridden a winner for four years, he called time and gave up the unequal struggle. He had had over 500 rides yet only managed a dozen winners and admitted that his finances were in a sorry state.

While acknowledging he would miss the racing game, he left the sport to manage a chain of curtain blind shops for Terry Greathead who held a training permit. “It would therefore be very easy to be drawn back,” David said, “so I’ve handed in my licence to banish the temptation.” 

David Chinn’s winners were, in chronological order:

1. Prince Helen, Market Rasen, June 6, 1982

2. Ballybutler, Hereford, August 27, 1988

3. Fair Patrick, Taunton, October 13, 1983

4. Burnditch Boy, Stratford-on-Avon, December 29, 1983

5. Rusty Fern, Ludlow, February 8, 1984

6. Misty Bay, Hexham, May 26, 1984

7. Ballybutler, Hereford, September 1, 1984

8. Ballybutler, Hereford, September 7, 1984

9. Sparkler Superb, Newton Abbot, August 28, 1985

10. Woodlands Generator, Uttoxeter, March 15, 1986

11. Chestnut Prince, Worcester, October 10, 1986

12. Woodlands Lad, Uttoxeter, March 21, 1987