Benny Goulden

1914 - 2001

Benny Goulden was one of those unsung stalwarts of racing – a highly valued work rider whose job it was to educate horses and get them fit on the gallops for others to claim the glory on the track.

He was a well-known figure in Newmarket and on the Heath, and had been since before the last war. His ambition was always to be a jockey but, though he had rides, the right beaks just did not go his way.

Christened Bernard but always known as Benny, he was born on March 14, 1914 and grew up in Manchester. He’d intended to get a job in a bank, as one of the extra subjects he studied at school was book-keeping.

He recalled: “One day my father showed me an advertisement in the ‘Manchester Evening News’ for a couple of lads wanted for a stable in France. Though I had hardly ever seen a horse, apart from one with a milk-cart, I remember saying ‘Yes. That’s the job for me’.”

He caught the Cross-Channel ferry to Boulogne for a month’s trial with top French trainer Frank Carter at Chantilly. “To start with I was put up on a hack and I gradually progressed from walking around on a lunge rein to trotting, cantering and eventually to riding racehorses.”

While serving his five-year apprenticeship at Chantilly, he met up with the stable’s top work rider Herbert Jones, who advised him that when he had finished his apprenticeship he should try his luck in Newmarket. That’s just what he did. He came over with Carter’s 1937 Two Thousand Guineas challenger Le Ksar, who went on to win the race. While the winner returned to his Chantilly stable, Benny stayed behind in Newmarket and got a job with Ted Leader at Machell Place Stables, where he worked as a lad and got a few rides in public on some of the yard’s lesser lights.

He then joined William Jarvis at Egerton House but after being called up for service during the war he returned to work for Ted Leader. He stayed there until 1948 and then joined Ryan Jarvis at Phantom House, where he stayed until Jarvis’s retirement in 1979. However, Benny took plenty of breaks along the way.

“I was able to go away in the winters and had four winter holidays riding winners for Mr Stanhope Joel in Bermuda. It worked the other way in Norway, where I went to ride one season because then I would come back and ride out for Mr Jarvis during the winters when they couldn’t race in Scandinavia.”

Benny made such an impression in his first season riding for a Norwegian owner at Ovrevoll that the same owner asked him to train his horses for the next three seasons, which he did with great success, ending up as champion jockey in Scandinavia.

Surprisingly, Benny rode only one winner in Britain – Jim Joel’s Photo Flash in the Nizefella Maiden Stakes for two-year-old fillies at Lingfield Park on Saturday, July 1, 1967, for his former guvnor Ted Leader, one of just ten rides he had that year. The filly may have been a 25/1 shot making her racecourse debut but she was well fancied by her trainer. But Benny very nearly didn’t make it to Lingfield in time, as he later recalled in an interview for the Sporting Life.

“Mr Leader always gave me rides even though I was with Ryan. One day he rang up the guvnor to ask if he could have me for a ride at the weekend. Ryan told me to go round and see Mr Leader, who showed me Photo Flash and told me that she was a very nice filly, although he had not done all that much work with her.

“Ryan Jarvis had some runners at Lingfield on the same day so said that I could travel down with him. We got as far as the Dartford Tunnel alright before getting stuck in a traffic jam and he said ‘I’m afraid you’ve had your ride Goulden but I’ll do all I can to get you there in time’.

“He drove like Nikki Lauda and we arrived in time for me to get weighed out and go out into the paddock to get my instructions from Ted Leader. He surprised me by telling me he thought I might ride a winner and that, despite being badly drawn, I should be in the first three.

“As he suggested I made sure I was caught flat-footed at the start. She settled well and after three and a half furlongs of the six she was up in the lead and going so well that when the favourite fell back I kicked on and she won very comfortably.

“Coming back into the winner’s enclosure I met up with Ted Leader and Ryan Jarvis at the same time. Ryan congratulated me on riding a winner and Ted thanked the guvnor for allowing me off to ride for him. He added that he had had a nice touch and Ryan quipped ‘I’m glad to hear that. You wouldn’t need much on at that price!’”

Photo Flash went on to win Ascot’s Princess Margaret Stakes next time out, ridden on that occasion by Jimmy Lindley. The following spring she finished a length runner-up to Caergwrle in the One Thousand Guineas.

In 1980, following Ryan Jarvis’s retirement, Benny joined former jockey Eric Eldin as a work rider, staying there until his own retirement.

“Racing is a wonderful game to be involved with,” he reflected in that Sporting Life article. “What other business would give you so much enjoyment, variety and excitement. It’s certainly far better than working in an office or a factory.”

Benny Goulden died in 2001.