Comley in high spirits thanks to winning exploits of Jay Bee Whiskey

Max Comley has become familiar with the question: ‘So what are you doing differently?’

This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 16th February.

The Gloucestershire point-to-point trainer’s win tally in the past three seasons had been two, four and six. Yet in the current campaign, he has saddled 14 winners before the half-way mark.

He says: “People ask about feed and gallops and so on, but we haven’t changed anything. The horses are fit and healthy and we’ve just had a bit more free rein from owners in where we place them.

“Take Jay Bee Whiskey, whose owner Kevin Crawford lives near Swindon. I saw a winnable race at Alnwick [in Northumberland], and he agreed to let me take the horse up there. He went up with a friend, stayed overnight and we were really well looked after at the races, so then I suggested a race in Cornwall, and he was more than happy to have a weekend down there.” Crawford has clearly been gripped by the travel bug, for on Sunday Jay Bee Whiskey ran and won at Friars Haugh near Kelso.

Jay Bee Whiskey (blue colours, right) winning at Alnwick (Grace Beresford)

Jay Bee Whiskey has won four races this season, as has stablemate Wagner – who is owned by Charlie Noell, the man behind sponsorship of Cheltenham’s Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase – while Oscar Montel gave the stable back-to-back victories in Cocklebarrow’s recent Lord Ashton of Hyde’s Cup, one of the season’s ‘classics’ which the yard landed a year earlier with Just Your Type. The last-named is owned by Neil O’Hara, Comley’s landlord at a yard near the Cotswolds village of Naunton.

Wagner (green and white colours, right) winning at Friars Haugh (Grace Beresford)

At 6ft 5in, Comley’s time riding as an amateur was always likely to be brief. He rode in 50 point-to-points and accrued one winner, yet the love of speed has not diminished – he was planning to ride in last week’s Golden Button Challenge, a cross-country race in which it pays to throw the heart over the fences and hope the head follows, but which was abandoned due to flooding.

Comley says: “I miss race riding every day and started training by accident. My parents have no knowledge of horses but, when I was three, my sister wanted riding lessons for her sixth birthday. I whinged so much they let me sit on a pony and I could not have been happier. My sister fell off on her second lesson and never went again.”

Going to school in Cheltenham stimulated the racing bug, and by running to the racecourse after lessons during the Festival, he was able to catch the vapours of the Gold Cup. Work experience with Kim Bailey and James Evans formulated career ideas, and a place at Hartpury College to study agriculture was ditched at the final hour.

He says: “I rang my mother, told her I wasn’t going and – to be fair – she said ‘I know you’re obsessed with racing’.”

Comley acknowledges doors have opened when needed. Friends and family helped with a few horses at the start, but it was through joining a team chase quartet that he met O’Hara. With winners have come new owners and he says: “I’m now getting approaches from people I haven’t met before.”

He adds: “I wouldn’t have trained as many winners this season without James King in the saddle. He is brilliant at reading races and we’ve never had a cross word.”