The physical dangers inherent in a jockey’s existence were of nothing to Jimmy Lindley after the upbringing he had experienced during the Second World War. He was only a small boy when he was buried under rubble for eight hours after his parents’ house in Eastbourne had been destroyed by a German bomb. His family moved up the road in this supposedly sedate seaside town only for the windows to be blown out during another raid.
“Eastbourne had it really bad,” Lindley said. “The German planes used to come over and when they couldn’t make it to London they’d drop their bombs on the south coast. I used to go out at night and watch the Battle of Britain — it was like Bonfire Night and you never saw the danger.” Going to live with his grandmother in Kent provided no respite, for another bomb promptly landed in her garden. “Fortunately it didn’t knock the house down. I suppose you could say I was three times lucky during the war,” he said.
Having survived, Lindley became a jockey renowned for his late spurts who won three Classic races. His most impressive triumph was when he rode Aggressor to victory in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in 1960. This was a great improvement on his ride on the same horse at Sandown in 1957, when it bolted into the bandstand. “The music stopped and the conductor demanded an explanation as to what I was doing there. Then whoosh, the horse jumped out, over the rockery.”
He won the 2,000 Guineas with Only For Life in 1963 and Kashmir in 1966. In 1964 he won the St Leger on Indiana. “There has never been a better horseman jockey,” reckoned Brough Scott, the writer and jockey. Other top-level triumphs included the Irish Oaks in 1961 with Ambergris; the Coronation Cup with Charlottown in 1967 and the Ascot Gold Cup with both Precipice Wood in 1970 and Lassalle in 1973.
He was pitted against Lester Piggott for much of his career. “Lester was never a bad lad but he was a hard nut — just like his father, Keith,” Lindley said. “We got on fine. I could read him like a book. If he sat next to me in the weighing room, it was because he wanted to know something and he would subtly steer the conversation to the subject. When he got what he wanted he’d be gone. But you couldn’t fail but like and admire him. When I felt rough on a Monday morning and needed to sweat off 2lb, I’d feign flu. Lester would never do that.”
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Lindley considered he was lucky to ride against some great jockeys, including Gordon Richards. His other perennial battle was with his weight: trying to keep it under control resulted in dehydration — the only water he swallowed was when he brushed his teeth — and kidney problems. “I knew I was in trouble as I was peeing the colour of black coffee,” he said.
Lindley was one of the first jockeys to have his own sauna at the house in Newbury which he lived in for 60 years, attracting two or three visits a week from fellow jockeys in Wally Swinburn and his neighbour and great friend Joe Mercer.
Lindley rode nearly 900 winners and yet became even better known for his television punditry after he retired in 1974. He was one of the first jockeys to embark on a broadcasting career when he joined the BBC, working as a paddock commentator for the corporation for almost 30 years. In addition, he wrote a racing column in the Daily Mail. For someone who desperately missed the adrenalin rush of being in the saddle on race day, media work was the next best thing.
James Frederick Lindley came from a working-class background. He was born in Wembley, north London, the son of Fred Lindley, who ran a café when the family moved to Eastbourne — supposedly a safer area than London during the war. Later he worked as a diver examining shipwrecks off the Isle of Mull. Lindley’s mother, Hilda (née Jordan) died when her son was 12.
Lindley took to riding as a small child before the war when he sat on the pony that pulled the milk cart in Eastbourne. Thereafter riding often took precedence over school. His introduction to the sport of kings was spending time at Major Sneyd’s stables near Wantage, Oxfordshire, in 1947. He left home at the age of 14 to be apprenticed as a jockey to Tom Masson in nearby Lewes. There, he received advice from a trainer who believed that riding was an art.
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Lindley rode his first winner on Sweet Phoenix at Brighton in 1952 when he was 17 and had his first significant triumph on Damremont in the City and Suburban Handicap at Epsom the following year. When his troublesome weight ballooned he joined another trainer, Matt Feakes, for two seasons over jumps. It was a fortuitous move: this was his future father-in-law.
Lindley married Pat Feakes in 1959. She survives him along with their sons, Mark, who works as a roofer, and Bruce, who runs a pheasant shoot at East Garston, outside Newbury. Lindley enjoyed fishing and shooting and had a motorboat which he kept at Lymington, Hampshire, journeying to the Isle of Wight and to race meetings at Deauville in France.
“He liked well-cut clothes and good conversation and was an immensely civilised man,” said Scott. “He never got involved in silly controversies and was never shrill.”
One of Lindley’s strongest attributes as a jockey, according to Geoff Lester, his friend, neighbour and a racing journalist, was his ability to read a race while in the thick of it. “Jimmy was such a fair jockey,” he said.
“If the gap wasn’t big enough in a race he wouldn’t go through it. Jimmy was riding alongside Joe Mercer in the middle of the Epsom Derby in 1962 when he shouted that they both had to keep away from an inexperienced French jockey, Maurice Larraun, who was weaving all over the course. So they stayed inside and the Frenchman brought seven horses down. A proper guy, we used to call Jimmy.”
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Jimmy Lindley, jockey and commentator, was born on May 16, 1935. He died after a heart attack on March 23, 2022, aged 86