Syd Warren

1912 - 1971

Born on August 21, 1912, National Hunt jockey Sydney Edmund Warren rode 27 winners over jumps between 1935 and 1950 in a career compromised by World War II. He later trained successfully at East Ilsley.

Syd made the perfect start to his race-riding career, winning on his first mount in public, Dawn Patrol, in the Four-Year-Old Selling Hurdle at Leicester on January 8, 1935. He rode five winners during the 1937/38 season and was just starting to get going when war was declared the following year.

With hostilities ended, he resumed his riding career and also took out a trainer’s licence, based at Andover. He enjoyed his most successful season in 1946/47 with seven wins, four of them within the space of seven weeks on novice hurdler Alfresco, which he also trained. They won at Newport in April, Wincanton and Newport again in May, and Newton Abbot in June.

Two more of those seven wins were achieved on a remarkable veteran named Bondsman. Bondsman had run in Windsor Lad’s 1934 Derby, finishing eleventh, ridden by Joe Childs, having been prominent beyond halfway. Switched to fences and trained by Frank Hartigan, he won the 1937 Stanley Chase over the Grand National fences in the hands of Eric Brown.

Syd acquired him after the war when the horse was 14, but they got off to a bad start when falling in a handicap chase at Taunton in November 1945. As Bondsman had never won over hurdles, Syd switched him to the smaller obstacles and was rewarded when they combined to win a Wincanton novices’ hurdle on October 24, 1946.

Aged 16, Bondsman won a selling hurdle at Newport on May 24, 1947, giving Syd the first leg of a double, completed by Alfresco in the Riverside Hurdle. There was yet more to come, for on January 22, 1948, Syd and Bondsman, by then aged 17, won the Selling Handicap Hurdle at Wincanton. He ran for the last time at Newton Abbot two months later, finishing unplaced.

Syd rode three winners from 37 mounts during the 1948/49 campaign, the first of them on another veteran, 12-year-old Murty, in a Newton Abbot novices’ hurdle on August 2, the second day of the season. They won again over the same course and distance later that month. Syd’s third win that term came on handicap hurdler Trapani at Wincanton in November.

He rode three more winners in the 1949/50 season, the first of them on Golden Surprise at Wincanton on Easter Monday. They followed up at Newton Abbot in May, then won the Dean Prior Selling Handicap Hurdle at Buckfastleigh on Whit Monday, May 29, 1948. That proved to be Syd’s last winner as a jockey. He rode for the final time when finishing last on Valvert in division two of the Charlton Musgrave Novices’ Hurdle at Wincanton on December 21, 1950.

Having hung up his race-riding boots, Syd trained briefly at Compton Bissett, Wiltshire in 1951, but the following year he moved to Kennett House Stables in East Ilsley, Berkshire, where he trained around 35 horses during the remainder of the 1950s and early 1960s. He gradually wound down his string and retired in 1966.

Syd Warren died in 1971.