Billy Williams

1932 - 2006

West Country National Hunt jockey William Raymond Williams was born on January 11, 1932. He started out as an amateur and made a dream start to his career, winning on his first mount in public, a horse named Arbitration in an amateur riders’ handicap chase at Newton Abbot on September 6, 1952.

He rode nine winners the following season, beginning with Les Kennard’s novice chaser Sibeal at Devon & Exeter in October. He rode doubles on both the Saturday and Monday of Newton Abbot’s 1954 Easter meeting. He also did well at Buckfastleigh’s Whitsun fixture, landing a handicap hurdle on Isle of Purbeck on the Saturday and a double on the Monday.

The second leg of that Buckfastleigh double was in the novice chase on Lindy Loo, owned and trained Bob Nightingall, a member of the famous family of Epsom trainers. Bob trained at Kenton, near Exeter. Lindy Loo was a full sister to multiple winning chaser Jimuru, whom Nightingall had bred before being sold to Lord Leigh. Switched to novice hurdles at the start of the 1954/55 season, Lindy Loo won six of her first seven races within the space of five weeks – three at Newton Abbot, two at Buckfastleigh and one at Devon & Exeter – ridden each time by Billy. In one of the Buckfastleigh victories, they beat champion jockey Fred Winter on the 5-4 favourite Erostrate II by six lengths. Billy ended that season with a score of 14 winners.

In addition to being a talented amateur rider both under National Hunt rules and in point-to-points – he rode 50 point-to-point winners between 1951 and 1956 – he also rode successfully as a showjumper. One day, having ridden a double at Newton Abbot, he went on to the Devon County Show where he beat Pat Smythe and Colonel Harry Llewellyn in two classes in the show jumping arena.

Eventually he became so involved with racing that he was unable to combine the two disciplines, so he gave up the show-jumping element. He turned professional in 1956 and rode ten winners that season, five of them coming on Stanley Hill’s front-running chaser Tatler III, at Taunton (twice), Wye, Wincanton and Buckfastleigh.

Tatler III provided three of Billy’s 11 winners for the 1956/57 campaign., at Lingfield in December, Windsor in February, and on Easter Saturday at Newton Abbot, where he came within a neck of a fourth win on Easter Monday. Tatler III and Billy arguably put up their best performances of that season in defeat in higher-grade races, finishing second at Cheltenham in January and also in Manchester’s Pathfinder Chase.

Billy guided Tatler III to a facile 20-length success at Newton Abbot on September 27, 1957. However, that would be last time they visited the winner’s enclosure together. Tatler III won just one more race – at Newton Abbot on Easter Monday 1958, when partnered by 7lb claimer Gerry Foster, replacing Billy to reduce the handicap mark to 12st – due to a combination of being in the grip of the handicapper and an increasing wind infirmity.

Toby Cobden’s chaser Basalt Knight provided Billy with three of his ten wins during that 1957/58 season, scoring at Taunton (twice) and Buckfastleigh. He won two more Taunton chases on that same horse during the 1958/59 campaign, in which rode seven winners, finishing with a Whit Monday double at Buckfastleigh on Aphasia and Tupost for Les Kennard.

Buckfastleigh was the venue for three of Billy’s total of five wins in the 1959/60 season, including on Aphasia and Tupost again at the Whitsun meeting. Billy also rode Tupost to victory at Newton Abbot on the opening day of the 1960/61 campaign but had only one more success during the whole of the season. The other, Quickstep II in a two-mile novices’ chase at Taunton on April 22, 1961, was his first success as a trainer-rider, having taken out a trainer’s licence at the start of the year, based at Ermington, near Ivybridge, South Devon.

Basalt Knight, at Taunton on November 4, 1961, was Billy’s sole riding success of the 1961/62 season. Thereafter, he registered scores of four, six, four and three, riding horses he also trained.

Billy last held a jockey’s licence in the 1966/67 season, during which he rode three winners, each of which he trained. The first two were gained on Torbay Chalet in a Newton Abbot novices’ hurdle in August and a Taunton novices’ chase in October. The last of them was Chilley Bridge in a novices’ hurdle at Worcester on November 9, 1966. He relinquished his licence later that season, having ridden a total of 91 winners under National Hunt rules.

He continued to train and saddled his share of winners, mostly at a modest level. Easily his best horse was the popular front-running grey chaser Tom’s Little Al, owned by Tom Staddon. At his prime in the 1984/85 season, Tom’s Little Al won a Kempton handicap chase and then gave his trainer his biggest success when winning the Rehearsal Chase at Chepstow. The following season he landed the Glynwed International Chase, a limited handicap, at Newbury. Sadly, he had to be put down in 1986, having being struck by lightning.

Billy Williams died on January 1, 2006, aged 73. His son, Ian Williams, is now a successful dual-purpose trainer, based near Alvechurch, on the southern outskirts of Birmingham.