Supernanny Hobbs upstages Andrews and co on first ride

Good riders from any equestrian discipline can try point-to-pointing, often with unexpected success.

This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 30th December.

At Chaddesley Corbett on 27th December a 12-runner maiden race seemed to revolve around Gina Andrews and odds-on favourite Captain Biggles, who had finished second in four of seven races under Rules for Olly Murphy before joining Tom Ellis’s stable.

When the race began to unfurl Captain Biggles was among a group of four horses who pulled clear, but among them was a handsome dark bay horse called Tara Storm under a nearly-motionless novice who was having her first ride. Eve Hobbs, her stirrup leathers set at safety-first length, seemed hesitant about joining the party, yet as Captain Biggles came under pressure she sent Tara Storm on at the final fence and ran out a convincing winner.

Bubbling with joy post-race, Cotswolds-based Hobbs (flanked by her parents, with Tara Storm in the winner’s enclosure) revealed she is an event rider who works as a nanny and had been attempting to get a spin in a race for several seasons. Tara Storm had been gifted to her by bloodstock agent Nicky de Balanda while she was working in France nannying his children, and Chaddesley Corbett was chosen for her debut because her father Jamie and grandfather Peter had ridden winners there.

When asked if she was aware that Andrews, Britain’s nine-time women’s champion, was alongside in the home straight, Hobbs gave a politician’s answer by saying: “I knew there were some really good riders in the race,” adding: “I had no idea what I was doing, but my horse kept going.”

Six-year-old Tara Storm had been off the course for two years having run five times in France without looking like a racehorse. Perhaps that is why he fitted in with Hobbs’s eventers, and with Eve’s mum riding alongside on one of these sport horses he had been brought to racing fitness for a memorable occasion. Point-to-pointing can do that sort of thing for people.

This was not Andrews’ only reverse, for the Ellis-trained Latenightpass, who she rode to victory in April’s Aintree Foxhunters’ Chase, was touched off on his season’s debut by the Olive Nicholls-ridden Shantou Flyer, a classy veteran twice placed in Cheltenham’s Festival Hunters’ Chase. Nicholls, 17, the daughter of multiple champion trainer Paul, is in her second season of pointing and her first out of novice company. She is compiling a smart set of skills.