Ollie McPhail

Born in Stockton-on-Tees but raised in Winchester, Ollie first appeared on a racecard on Friday December 6, 1996, riding The Deaconess in an amateur riders hurdle at Hereford.

Like practically every other would-be-jockey, he had spent his youth riding in point-to-points and had great fun in these on a horse his parents had bought him.

In March, 1997, riding at the Cheltenham Festival for the first time, he came third on Lucky Dollar in the Kim Muir Chase.

Then, on Monday 24 of that month, he won his first race, Bright Destiny scoring at 7/1 at Hexham in the 3.00 race

He then joined David Nicholson's Jackdaw Stables and steadily began making a name for himself.

With seventeen winners behind him, he climbed up on the well-fancied Blue Cheek for the 1998 Aintree Foxhunters' Chase (below)

But Ollie's brilliant start was about to hit the buffers. After Richard Burton had been unseated at the first and Julian Pritchard coming down at the next, Ollie found himself tackling the Chair with a loose horse on either side. The three collided mid-air: the result was a visit to Fazakerley hospital to get a fractured cheekbone tended to. In an operation remarkably similar to one endured by Lorcan Wyer, surgeons cut open his head from ear to ear, pulled his face down and took a piece of bone from the top of his skull. This was then put under his right eye to repair the damage. (The hole at the top of his head could still be felt years later.)

Remarkably, he was back in the saddle some six months later, riding Hollow Sound at Huntingdon on 18 September.

Ollie's first Grand National ride had come in 2000 when replacing Tom Jenks on the fourteen-year-old Camelot Knight, having its last race. The pair finished fifteenth.

He was back two years later on Mantle Prince. Having outrun his odds (he had started at 200/1) the horse unshipped Ollie at the second Valentine's.

Having ridden a total of 128 winners, Ollie took to the saddle for the last time when partnering 100/1 shot He's Mine Too on January 26, 2008.

But racing had not seen the last of Ollie.

From his home in Moreton-in Marsh, he worked as a regional education officer with the British Horseracing & Standards Trust (BHEST).

Ollie takes pupils out of their classrooms and onto the racecourse, the day out being based on a racing theme and mathematics. Ollie takes them behind scenes visiting the weighing room and the parade ring, all the time setting them number-crunching problems.

In 2010, he was promoted to lead education officer.

Spending four days a week at the office and one day at home, it's a role that he has comfortably slipped into.

'I'm thoroughly enjoying it,' he said. 'It keeps me in touch with the racing crowd.'

The article below is taken directly from the web.

Having only recently retired, you may be of the opinion that former jump jockey Ollie McPhail is the past. Far from it, he is likely to have as much bearing on racing's future as his ex-colleague A P McCoy.

His retirement, aged 31 after 130 winners, is to facilitate his promotion to full-time regional education officer for BHEST (the British Horseracing Education and Standards Trust).

While much of this august body's time is taken up with dishing out certificates to workers in the racing industry to comply with Health and Safety legislation, McPhail is working on the organising of its Racing To School initiative, which aims to get 10,000 schoolchildren to the racecourse annually.

Like all the best jobs he fell into it by accident and he's never looked back. There are now thousands of children out there who've never heard of McCoy, but the one live jockey they know and like is Ollie McPhail.

Of course, the job is not without incident. As a rule of thumb schools tend to take two views about Racing To School; one is to reward high achievers and the other is to stimulate the non-triers - and naturally it is the latter that cause the trouble. As teachers aren't allowed to lift a finger to an unruly pupil now, let alone cuff one, they once had to have two policemen called out to Newton Abbot to remove a disruptive influence.

But McPhail has ways of getting round it and keeping their attention. A favourite trick is taking a bunch of kids into a racecourse sauna and tipping a bucket of water on the hot coals. Working out the weights on the racecourse scales and handicap ratings are good maths lessons, while at the same time racing's hope is that one day these children will return as fully paid-up racegoers or, better, become involved.

It is an interesting point he makes about teachers not being able to whack pupils these days. When McPhail came into racing, as a cocky amateur at David Nicholson's yard, men were men and employment law was still the figment of some civil servant's imagination.

As a new boy, who was adjudged to have been a bit too lippy towards the headland, he was summoned to a lunchtime meeting in the tack-room. It dawned on him, too late, that he was the focus of attention at this kangaroo court. He was tied to the table, the clippers were produced, the fuzzy bits shaved off and he was covered from top to toe in kaolin, a quick-drying clay normally used to cool horses shins.

For good measure another then-unknown amateur 'Choc' Thornton was given the same treatment and while the rest of the yard headed for the warm hostel and lunch, this unlikely pair had to hose each other down under cold taps.

It was while this was going on that 'The Duke' walked into the yard with two important owners Bill and Shirley Robins. "This is Viking Flagship," he pointed out before reeling off some of the most famous horses in training at the time.

"This is Relkeel etc" and in that unflustered, deadpan style of his, as they passed the two-naked jockeys in the middle of the lawn who looked like they were scrubbing up after a bout of mud wrestling he added: "And these are my two stable amateurs." Oh happy days.