Article by Chris Pitt
National Hunt jockey Noel Peter Boston rode a total of 30 winners in a career that stretched from 1948 to 1963.
He rode his first winner on Kentish Poet in the Fakenham Maiden Hurdle at West Norfolk Hunt’s Easter Monday fixture on March 29, 1948.
However, he had to wait over five years before his second, Jungle Duel, in a 1m 5f juvenile hurdle at Huntingdon on October 17, 1953, his only winner that season.
With opportunities for jump jockeys in Newmarket being limited, Noel ventured north and joined Verly Bewicke’s Alnwick, Northumberland stable and rode his first winner for Bewicke on Spangle at Kelso on May 5, 1955. Two more winners followed later that month.
He began the next season by winning four successive races in 18 days on Bewicke’s novice hurdler Tillside, but despite that promising start, he rode only one other winner all season. And it was to be almost a year until he rode his next, by which time he had joined the stable of Penrith trainer Tommy Robson.
He achieved his best season numerically in 1956/57 with eight winners, all of them trained by Robson. They included two each on novice hurdlers Cockbridge, Headwind and Sham Fight. (The latter would eventually prove by far the best of that trio, going on to win the 1962 Scottish Grand National, ridden and trained by Tommy Robson.) Noel’s successes that season resulted in him not only losing his 7lb allowance but losing his claim altogether after riding his 15th winner (the 3lb allowance from 15 to 25 winners had not yet been introduced).
Though devoid of a claim, he made a bright start to the next campaign, notching three winners in September 1957, two of them on Cockbridge, including the Percy Bewicke Cup Handicap Chase at Hexham. In December, he won a pair of novice hurdles on Robson’s seven-year-old Fellermelad. However, he then began to struggle, riding just one more winner that season and none at all the next.
He returned south to Newmarket in 1959 and began riding for Basil Foster, for whom he won twice within a fortnight on a four-year-old hurdler named Takao. He rode four more winners for Foster in the 1960/61 campaign, including two novice hurdles on Volcanist in the opening week of the season. He rode what would be the final winner of his career on Orlator in a three-year-old selling hurdle at Nottingham on December 5, 1960.
He continued to ride for a couple more seasons before announcing his retirement, bringing to an end a career that had seen him ride winners at Britain’s most northerly course (Perth) and its most southerly (Buckfastleigh).
Following his retirement from the saddle, Noel settled in Newmarket, where for several years he was a tour guide at Newmarket’s National Horse Racing Museum.
Noel Boston’s winners were, in chronological order:
1. Kentish Poet, West Norfolk Hunt (Fakenham), March 29, 1948
2. Jungle Duel, Huntingdon, October 17, 1953
3. Spangle, Kelso, May 5, 1955
4. Bird Song, Market Rasen, May 14, 1955
5. Romanic, Hexham, May 28, 1955
6. Tillside, Carlisle, October 10, 1955
7. Tillside, Wetherby, October 15, 1955
8. Tillside, Kelso, October 22, 1955
9. Tillside, Newcastle, October 28, 1955
10. Highland Bard, Wetherby, November 26, 1955
11. Cockbridge, above, Doncaster. November 23, 1956
12. Pious Mac, above, Haydock Park, November 29, 1956
13. Cockbridge, Manchester, December 7, 1956
14. Sham Fight, Haydock Park, January 11, 1957
15. Sham Fight, Haydock Park, February 7, 1957
16. Perky Scot, Ayr, March 18, 1957
17. Headwind, Kelso, May 2, 1957
18. Headwind, Hexham, June 8, 1957
19. Cockbridge, Sedgefield, September 14, 1957
20. Lochmaben, Perth, September 25, 1957
21. Cockbridge, Hexham, September 28, 1957
22. Fellermelad, above, Newcastle, December 14, 1957
23. Fellermelad, Wetherby, December 28, 1957
24. Arcopeto, Hexham, May 24, 1958
25. Takao, Doncaster, November 21, 1959
26. Takao, Plumpton, December 2, 1959
27. Volcanist, Newton Abbot, August 1, 1960
28. Volcanist, Buckfastleigh, August 6, 1960
29. Tail Wheat, Stratford-on-Avon, October 20, 1960
30. Orlator, above, Nottingham, December 5, 1960
