Jim's third & final winner
Jim Bentley
Article by Alan Trout
James Henry Bentley, known as Jim, rode two winners on the Flat as an apprentice in the 1920s, and then a few years later had one success over jumps.
Apprenticed to trainer Dick Botterill, he had his first ride on Holy Terror, who finished tenth of eleven runners in the Milton Maiden (Apprentice) Plate at Doncaster on May 30, 1924. He had to wait three years for his first success which came at Catterick Bridge on July 29, 1927, when Sir Picton was a one-length winner of the Brough Apprentice Handicap Plate, one of the four races that the five-year-old captured that season.
On April 26 the following year, Jim doubled his score when Sir Picton again proved too good for his rivals with a four-length success in the Park (Apprentice) Plate at Pontefract, beating the future well-known jockey ‘Snowy’ Fawdon on the 7-4 favourite Tramond.
Although he continued to have the occasional mount on the Flat, there were no more wins, leading to him taking out a National Hunt jockey’s licence for the 1933/34 season. There was no immediate breakthrough, but on October 25, 1935 Jim was able to celebrate a winner when Vale Royal, owned by Lord Grimthorpe and trained by Harold Bazley, won the Stockeld Juvenile Hurdle at Wetherby by three-quarters of a length. It was Vale Royal’s first run under NH rules and the only one he ever won.
Likewise, Jim Bentley never won another race thereafter, even though he held a licence until the 1938/39 season.
