Mel Sisson

Northern National Hunt jockey Mel Sisson managed fewer than 15 winners in a career spanning 15 years, but he once rode a winner at the Cheltenham Festival, only to lose the race in the stewards’ room.

Christened Robert Melville Sisson, he began his career as an apprentice with Harry Peacock at Richmond, Yorkshire and rode a few winners on the Flat. However, he soon turned to jumping and achieved his first success in that sphere on Dankali, trained by Penrith permit holder William Pearson, in the Harrington Long Distance Hurdle, worth £102 to the winner, at Market Rasen on Boxing Day 1951.

It was almost two years before his next, on selling hurdler Tulliepowrie at Southwell on November 26, 1953, but he then endured a wait of nearly five years before he rode another, John Barclay’s juvenile hurdler Khiva at Perth on September 24, 1958. Happily, that was followed a month later by a Kelso success on Barclay’s novice hurdler Bibury.

He rode three winners the following season, 1959/60, the first being on Yakity Yak at Nottingham on December 8,

trained by Tot Kelso at Mid Town Farm Stables, near the old Penrith racecourse. The other two were gained on a useful three-mile handicap hurdler called Union Pacific for another Cumbrian trainer, John Dixon, whose stables were at Wigton.

The first of them came at Manchester on February 27, 1960, following which, on Tuesday, March 8, Mel rode Union Pacific in the three-mile Birdlip Handicap Hurdle (now run as the Pertemps Final) on the opening day of Cheltenham’s National Hunt

meeting. Mel brought his mount through to challenge two out, jumped the last in front and ran on to beat fellow northern raider Cool Reception, ridden by George Milburn, by three lengths, with Sword Flash two lengths further away in third. It was the undoubted highlight of Mel’s career yet it lasted only a few minutes, for although Cool Reception’s rider had not sought to lodge an objection, the stewards nonetheless decreed that sufficient interference had taken place to merit altering the result, hence they disqualified Union Pacific for boring and crossing the runner-up and placed him second.

Union Pacific, who was a son of Union Jack, winner of the 1938 Northumberland Plate and sire of most of the jumpers in Cumberland, duly won his next race at Ayr on March 14, 1960 but it must have been scant consolation for the one that got away.

While Union Pacific went on to become a decent chaser, that Ayr victory proved to be the last of Mel’s career. Who knows how differently things might have

turned out had Union Pacific kept that race at Cheltenham?

As it transpired, rides became fewer and farther between. He relinquished his licence in 1963 but took it out again for the 1964/65 season. His riding career appears to have ended with a fall from a novice hurdler named Ling-Bird at Catterick on New Year’s Day 1965.