New film offers fantastic insight into the pressures of life as a jump jockey

The script or, indeed, scripts for Frankel the film may be gathering dust but a short film about a jump jockey after a bad a day at the office called The Fall is to go into production next month.

Nathan Horrocks, who rode 60 winners as a jump jockey before launching Equine Productions in 2012, is currently in Keeneland for this weekend’s Breeders’ Cup where he is helping out coverage with his jockey cams.

Of course when he launched the jockey cam it was at Aintree in 2015 and the horse which carried it was the one he rode out on a daily basis at home; Many Clouds. If Carlsberg did jockey cam launches….

On the dirt in America, with the grit flying, there is not much difference between the view from a jockey cam and a worm’s eye view of a sandpit so he has developed a rear-view angle to show what is going on behind the jockey carrying the camera on his helmet rather than what is happening in front of him.

Horrocks wrote The Fall, about the unique pressures a jockey finds himself under, a couple of years ago but, following the deaths of James Banks, who used to kip on his sofa occasionally, and Liam Treadwell he decided to get it commissioned.

It has been funded by the Sir Peter O’Sullivan Charitable Trust and topped up by contributions from the Even Keel Foundation, a men’s mental health charity, and the Professional Jockeys Association.

The best known member of the cast is Robert Bathurst of Cold Feet fame and a man so keen on racing one imagines being cast as a trainer (albeit unseen on the end of the phone) is all his Sundays come at once.

Bathurst, who is currently playing the British Ambassador, Nevile Henderson, in a Netflix drama about Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain set in Germany in 1938 – ‘You can’t move for Nevilles,’ he said – offered to help Horrocks, who had never directed actors before, by becoming co-director.

Though Bathurst would not give too much away about his part as the trainer, he did say that the ride “had not gone well, shall we say,” so I think we can expect a rollicking.

Daniel Thrace, best known for his parts in horror films, looks perfect casting for the jockey while his wife will be played by Chloe Wade, it will be filmed on location in Ascot’s weighing room, finished by the end of January and should be doing the Film Festival rounds – if there are any - in the spring of 2021.

Lester Piggot's treasures for sale

It looks like Lester Piggott’s having a clear out of his attic. At Graham Budd’s two-day online auction of sporting memorabilia starting on Monday the great jockey is selling 70 lots.

They include the winning rider’s trophy from the 1919 Grand National, won by his grandfather Ernie, and the trainer’s trophy from Ayala’s win in 1963 which was presented to his father Keith.

Piggott is also selling a few of his own trophies including the 1957 Ascot Gold Cup, a number of jockeys’ trophies for the Derby and - surprising that such a prestigious prize has survived all previous Piggott visits to car boot sales and clear-outs - the two-handed silver cup for winning the Devizes Donkey Derby in 1955. Just imagine the plastic tat you would get winning a donkey derby these days.

In among the old racecards, badges, art, books, horseshoe mounted ashtrays and racing ephemera is one lot (212) which caught my eye. It is a stunning scene depicting the Grand National in a piece of ‘tree art’ by Liverpool’s Roy Bouffler who teaches wood carving as a ‘therapy’ in the city’s Victoria Park a couple of days a week, but has actually never seen the National live despite being local.

It is a fairly sizable chunk of sweet chestnut nearly three metres long by half a metre. Working on for three years it took Bouffler in the region of 4,500 hours to complete the horses, jockeys and detailed backdrop of the crowd. The estimate for the wood carving is £500-800 and all proceeds of its sale will go to Alzheimers Society and Cancer Research. Hopefully it will make more.