Carroll Gray

Born on April 7, 1957, south-west based jump jockey Carroll Gray rode more than 60 winners during a career that was beset by injury. Indeed, it is doubtful that any other jockey was unluckier with bone-breaking falls. 

He started out riding in point-to-points when aged 16 before turning professional in the late 1970s. He rode six winners during the 1978/79 season including an Easter Monday hurdle race double at Newton Abbot on Silly One for Taunton owner-trainer Bernard Scriven and Dark Sky for Chulmleigh trainer Reg Keenor. 

He enjoyed his best season in 1979/80 with 15 winners. They included a Newton Abbot double on August 16 aboard Dark Sky in the Les Fletcher Memorial Challenge Trophy Handicap Hurdle and another Keenor-trained horse, selling hurdler Young Hopeful.

The term ‘Young Hopeful’ may well have summed up Carroll’s career prospects at that point, as the 7lb claimer racked up the winners at the south-west tracks, mostly for his retained stable of Mark Stephens, who trained at Wrantage, near Taunton. They included novice hurdler Esterlina at Taunton in October and selling hurdler Ann Dee at Devon & Exeter in December. He began 1980 with a New Year’s Day winner on selling hurdler Spanish God at Devon & Exeter, followed by 14-year-old selling chaser Mr Q for permit holder Ray Barrow at Newton Abbot on January 17, then a Wincanton handicap chase on Easy Pickens on the last day of the month.

In March he won the Foxtor Challenge Cup Chase at Devon & Exeter on the Stephens-trained Gleaming Flight, following up on him five days later in a novice riders’ chase at Sandown Park. At Newton Abbot’s Easter fixture, he won on Billy Williams’ novice hurdler Tom’s Little Al, destined to become the best horse Williams would ever train when put over fences. 

Carroll bookended the Taunton card on May 2, landing the opening selling hurdle on Rose Charm and the closing Arthur Council Handicap Hurdle on Tango Slave, both for Mark Stephens, returning there later that month to win another selling hurdle on Rose Charm. 

The 1980/81 campaign promised to be equally successful for Carroll, who kicked it off by riding Dark Sky to repeat the previous year’s victory in Les Fletcher Memorial Challenge Trophy Handicap Hurdle at Newton Abbot. On August 30 he achieved his most important success when landing Stratford’s Virginia Gold Cup Handicap Chase on Calculator for Axbridge-based owner-trainer Roy Isgar. 

He carried on riding more winners for Mark Stephens but, in January 1981, he broke his left leg when he was thrown by a horse who reared up in the paddock at Taunton. That rendered out of action for the remainder of the season. 

Then, at Newton Abbot on the second day of the 1981/82 season, he broke the same leg again on his first ride back when unseated from selling chaser Straight Thorn. After that, he found it hard to get going again. Whenever he looked like doing so, his injury jinx would come back to haunt him, with a series of accidents including a ruptured lung, a broken shoulder blade and several broken collarbones. 

The end came in a novice chase at Stratford on March 12, 1987. Carroll’s mount, a horse named Shoemaker, trained by Pat Rodford, unseated him at the second fence. Carroll broke a bone in his neck and his left arm. It was an awful race in which two horses suffered fatal falls, the contest subsequently being declared void after all the finishers had failed to jump the final open ditch. 

Carroll spent two and a half months in Warwick Hospital. When he went to reapply for his jockey’s licence, the Jockey Club’s medical consultant Doctor Michael Allen told him that he would be unlikely to survive another fall without serious injury and was unable to recommend that he be granted a licence. It came as a bitter blow to the 30-year-old rider. He had half-expected that he wouldn’t be able to race-ride again but Dr Allen advised him not to ride at all. He accepted, though, that given the severity of his injuries during his much-battered career, he was lucky to be still walking. 

Carroll and his wife Christine – who also rode as a professional jump jockey under her maiden name of Young and suffered a bad fall at Bangor-on-Dee in September in 1983 which rendered her unconscious for two days and in intensive care for a week – set up a pre-training establishment at their base at Horlake, Moorland, near Bridgwater. Carroll took out a trainer’s licence in August 2000 and, over the course of the next decade, the husband and wife team did well with their small string of around half a dozen horses. 

But then, one bleak night in November 2012, floodwater poured into his property on the Somerset Levels close to the River Parrett. Carroll and Christine, were forced to flee with their horses before their escape route was blocked by the rapidly rising water. As they left, there were three inches of water in each box. It eventually rose to four feet. 

Every one of the stables at Moorland had tide-marks halfway up the walls, while across the road, much of the area they used for galloping the horses lay under feet of water. They were only able to keep their horses going by renting boxes from nearby trainer Kevin Bishop.  

Furthermore, whereas most floods subside after a couple of days, the water kept on coming back. When they were finally able to return to their home, they found irreplaceable racing memorabilia from their riding days had been washed away or ruined. As Carroll said at the time: “It’s heart-breaking. We are not big-time trainers, but racing is our life and we get by with a few winners. We built our home here 22 years ago and love what we do. But there seems no end to this. This is a living nightmare with no end in sight and, I admit, I'm afraid to move back.” 

They didn’t. Instead, in 2013, they moved into new training facilities at Spaxton, near Bridgwater, from where they sent out five winners from 45 runners during the 2013/14 National Hunt season. Rarely have two people been more deserving of a slice of luck to come their way.