Keith Hellewell

Keith Norton Hellewell was apprenticed to Epsom trainer Dermot ‘Boggy’ Whelan. He rode his first winner on Listoke Invader in the Apprentices’ Handicap over the straight mile at Lincoln on March 24, 1958, the first race of the new Flat season.

He thus became leading jockey for half an hour until Ken Gethin joined him by winning the next race, a two-year-old seller, on Just Friendly, owned by the celebrated Daily Express racing correspondent and BBC commentator Peter O’Sullevan.

Interestingly, among the young apprentices in that first race of the 1958 campaign were three other past or future ‘half-hour heroes’: Edward Adams (1956), Neville Hill (1957) and Michael Corke (1963). Other riders included Brian Connorton, Tony Hide, Brian Jago, Jock Skillling and Roy Podmore, all of whom would go on to forge successful careers

Sadly, Keith Hellewell’s racing career did not have the longevity of those of Connorton, Jago or Skilling. Indeed, he rode just one more winner, that being on the Whelan-trained Commem in the Marsh Two-Year-Old Stakes at Folkestone on June 23, 1959.

Little more is known of Keith thereafter. But at least he could claim to have once been the Flat season’s leading jockey, albeit for just half an hour.

Keith Hellewell’s winners were:

1. Listoke Invader, Lincoln, March 24, 1958

2. Commem, Folkestone, June 23, 1959