Frank Storey, who died in a nursing home near Newmarket on 9 January 2016, was among the best work riders in Newmarket and spent 27 years as an important part of Sir Henry Cecil’s team during the glory years at Warren Place in the 1970s and 80s.
Born in 1932, Frank Storey was apprenticed to George Colling at Bedford Lodge, Newmarket and rode his first winner on Noon in a Pontefract apprentices’ race on July 12, 1950. He rode two more winners that year, both in apprentice contests, Safety Light at Warwick on October 13 and Noon again on October 24. Noon also provided him with his only winner of 1951, at Windsor on September 15, that being the last he would ride as an apprentice.
Having completed his apprenticeship, Frank was employed as a work rider. He took out a jockey’s licence in 1961 but rode in public only occasionally, mainly on horses that needed an educational introduction.
On Saturday, July 1, 1972, Henry Cecil’s two-year-old filly Nefeli gave Frank his first winner for 21 years when landing the Warren Hill Stud Stakes (right) on Newmarket’s July Course. One of just five rides Frank had that year, Nefeli was a 20-1 outsider making her racecourse debut, but this one clearly did not require as much ‘educating’ as people thought. It was another Henry Cecil-trained juvenile filly that gave Frank his next – and final – winner, this being Nigella Damascena, who made all to score at Warwick (left) on Bank Holiday Monday, August 26, 1974.
Frank continued to have the occasional ride in races until 1978 but his real value was as a linchpin work rider at Warren Place. Over the course of more than a quarter of a century he rode most of Sir Henry’s top horses on the Newmarket gallops, including 1987 Derby hero Reference Point, on whom, as a two-year-old, Frank had persevered when the horse had been dismissed by some as being virtually useless.
Frank passed away, aged 83, in a nursing home near Newmarket on Saturday, January 9, 2016, leaving a widow, Jean, and two daughters, Sharon and Maxine. He was buried at West Suffolk Crematorium, Bury St Edmunds.