Peter Ward (1990)

Peter Ward 

Article by Alan Trout

Peter Daniel Ward rode eight winners over jumps in the early 1990s, the first of them on Cainsbridge Queen, trained by Mrs Gill Jones, getting up in the last few strides to beat the Irish raider Shayista, ridden by Adrian Maguire, and land the Ranvet Novices’ Hurdle at Wincanton on October 24, 1991 by half a length. Peter had five more rides on the six-year-old that season but the best they managed was one fourth place. 

It was more than two years before he won another race. By then he was riding as a conditional for Mark Wilkinson and was successful seven times in the 1993/94 season, six of them over fences. 

Three of those wins were on the chaser The Tartan Spartan, including the Stan Mellor Handicap Chase at Nottingham, the venue at which Mellor had recorded the 1,000th winner of his career on Ouzo (the first jump jockey to do so) in December 1971. 

Peter had his last victory at Fontwell Park on April 21, 1983, when Quiet Dawn, trained by Jeff King, repelled the challenge of Temporale to take the Lidsey Conditional jockeys’ Selling Handicap Hurdle. 

Peter Ward’s winners were, in chronological order:

1. Cainsbridge Queen, Wincanton, October 24, 1991

2. The Tartan Spartan, Nottingham, December 18, 1993

3. Jolly Jaunt, Ludlow, December 22, 1993

4. The Tartan Spartan, Southwell, December 29, 1993

5. Catchapenny, Kempton Park, January 21, 1994

6. The Tartan Spartan, Lingfield Park, March 19, 1994

7. Knockaverry, Towcester, April 19, 1994

8. Quiet Dawn, Fontwell Park, April 21, 1994