Ironman York, one of pointing’s finest, hangs up his saddle

One of point-to-pointing’s most admired riders has hung up his saddle at the age of 59 after compiling 376 winners in the sport.

Phillip York (above), known to fellow competitors and racegoers as ‘Yorkie’, rode 412 winners in all forms of racing during a career marked by durability, toughness, and no little skill. Remarkably, he failed to complete the course in his first 20 rides and was 28 before he rode a winner.

Based near Guildford in Surrey, yet familiar to point-to-point fans across many areas of the country, York was never national champion – although he finished runner-up to Shropshire’s Richard Burton in 2010/11 when riding 34 winners, three fewer than his rival – and he did not win any of the major hunters’ chases, but he was widely admired by fellow riders, not least for his willingness to accept any booking. Despite that he retires having enjoyed a relatively injury-free career.

One of the most quotable competitors the sport has known, he said: “A few things have made me come to the decision and for the past couple of seasons I’ve ridden because I can, not for any other reason. I’m not going to achieve more than I’ve already achieved – would getting to 400 point-to-point winners make any difference? It’s such a ridiculous number considering it took me 20 rides to get round.

“I’ve always wondered what made people retire? I’ve seen people come into the sport after me and finish before me, and I’d think ‘why have they done that?’ I guess it’s just miles on the clock.

“I’ve never been in a gym – well, that’s not strictly true, because when I was a demolition contractor I demolished a gym, so I was in it in a 20-ton digger. I’ve never lifted weights, but I did have a fairly hard ‘paper round’ in that I used to stack hay from when I was a kid. We’d make 20,000 bales of hay a year and we’d stack them by hand in the field, then on a lorry, then in a barn – it was all manual labour and there weren’t many of us.”

Phillip York, who only entered a gym once – in a 20-ton digger (Ce)

York’s father, Ray, a character in his own right who never used five words when 25 would do, rode as an amateur, later held a full trainer’s licence, and provided his son with early rides. He was 18 when the first came at Tweseldown and resulted in a fall on Jolly Nun, an outcome that was typical of his early forays. That season he had four more rides and endured two more falls on Jolly Nun and two pulled-ups on Servalan. York then took a seven-year break from the sport during which he married Karen, fathered sons Daniel and Thomas and started his own business.

On his return to the sport in March 1992 his form-line of letters continued, but everything changed a couple of years later when he and his father acquired Paco’s Boy, a £1,700 purchase out of Martin Pipe’s stable and who had acquired a rating high over fences of 145.

York said: “When I started riding in points I thought it was impossible to win a race – I thought everyone who did must have cheated. I couldn’t work out how you could jump 18 fences, let alone finish in front. Apparently I was a disobedient hooligan who wouldn’t do what he was told. Riding five-year-old mares that I had broken in probably wasn’t a good idea. I certainly wouldn’t put a young novice rider up on such a horse – but my dad did.

“Getting Paco’s Boy was the start of better times. Until he came along I was thinking ‘this is impossible; I can’t do it’.  I had always risen to the occasion, but this time I thought I had failed. I was on the point of packing it in, but Paco’s Boy knew everything – I’d never ridden one of those before.”

On March 2, 1995, the combination won a match at Tweseldown, scored again a week later at Parham, and then went back to Tweseldown to win a race in which former Cheltenham Gold Cup runner-up Yahoo finished second.

York said: “If I told Paco’s Boy to do something that was wrong he ignored me. At Bexhill [Catsfield] one day we were running towards one of the downhill fences and he started jamming the brakes on. I was furiously driving him, and he braked harder, and then a loose horse ran across us, right under his head. Then he said, ‘okay, I’ll jump the fence now’. It was an absolute lesson for me in looking around. After the fence I gave him a pat, and said ‘you carry on, I’ll just sit here’. He’d run in two Grand Nationals, so he knew his job.

“If I’d had him while still a teenager I would probably have won a couple of races, said ‘that’s easy’, and packed it in.”

York won five races on Paco’s Boy and he would progress from there to ride a stream of multiple winners, headed by Dante’s Storm (12 wins) and Freddies Return (11 wins) who he also trained. His association with Berkshire trainer Tim Underwood proved particularly fruitful. On Underwood’s Timmie Roe he won eight races in the 2018/19 season, although the Leading Horse title went to Simon Waugh’s Winged Crusader, who also won eight times, but gained more placings.

In that same season York also rode seven winners on Underwood’s Streets Of London, while in May 2023 he brought up his 400^th point-to-point winner on the same trainer’s Must Have Hope. A few weeks later he was given the sport’s inaugural Outstanding Achievement Award at the national dinner.

York rode eight winners last season, and fittingly concluded his career on a horse of Underwood’s when finishing fourth on Song For My Father at Kingston Blount in May.

The highest-rated horse he rode failed to provide him with a winner. Venn Ottery, a hard puller who barely stayed two miles, was trained in Devon by his owner, Oliver Carter, a man of many eccentricities. After Venn Ottery pulled up in his first three races under rules – and gained a reputation for being a tearaway – Carter opted to drop the then seven-year-old into a point-to-point, and York was given the call.

He said: “That horse was typical of the story of my career. I heard there was a spare ride so rang Oliver Carter and he said ‘you’d better come and school the horse’ which I thought was odd given that I was in Surrey and he was in Devon, but I jumped straight in the car and turned up at a gallop. There was a crowd gathered. I didn’t know Oliver Carter and I didn’t know the horse, but everyone else did.

“Anyway, we went three times around slowly, and then twice a bit quicker, and he was just starting to get strong and took a bit of pulling up the final time, but it went fine, he schooled nicely and I was booked to ride him. In a race he was incredibly strong.”

York pulled up Venn Ottery at Badbury Rings in their first race together, fell on him next time out in a Gr.1 (!) novices’ chase at Aintree (SP 100/1), but managed to get him round in a race at Stratford. They were paired another eight times in a variety of races, then, as a nine-year-old Venn Ottery was sent by Carter to Paul Nicholls’ stable. For the champion trainer he briefly soared under Joe Tizzard and Ruby Walsh, running in six races within a month, winning four, finishing fourth in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and lifting his handicap rating in stages from a mark of 80 to 149.

During that rise – one which eventually fell away after Nicholls and Carter agreed to disagree and the horse moved yards – Venn Ottery was the talk of racing, but he might have been written off long before had Ironman York not played a role in teaching the horse to show some level of sanity in races.

Impressed by York’s handling of Venn Ottery, another Devon trainer, Chris Down, booked him to ride Can’t Be Scrabble, who had looked unrideable when bolting in a point-to-point. York said: “Chris warned me, he didn’t hide anything, but I said ‘go on then’ and went to Bratton Down to ride him in a race. He was interesting, very difficult, but we completed the course [finished fifth] and received a round of applause from just about everybody there, including the officials.”

The pair later won two point-to-points, plus a novices’ hurdle at Stratford in which the second horse was Ollie Magern, who became a top-class chaser.

York admits his new interest is the sea, and with a motor boat moored at Southsea and a fishing boat in Cornwall he has aspirations for a cross-Channel adventure before too long.

Asked for a race-riding highlight he said: “All of it. I had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun and relatively few injuries. A two-week stand-down for concussion was the longest I was off.

“I’ve got a few things to concentrate on at home now, but it’s been great. Over the past few years I’ve been cutting down on horses. I had 39 at one point, but now I’m down to three and they are here because a novice rider, Huw Richards, started here last year, and is keen to ride in point-to-points.

“He is 17, still at college and having his first ride on Can’t Buy Time at Larkhill on Sunday. I’ll be there to make sure he’s sitting on the horse in the right direction.”