Willie Carson The Champion Jockey was born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1942. He was apprenticed to Captain Gerald Armstrong at his stables at Tupgill, North Yorkshire. His first winner in Britain was Pinker’s Pond in a seven-furlong apprentice handicap at Catterick Bridge Racecourse on 19 July 1962.
He was British champion jockey five times (1972, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1983), won 17 British Classic Races and passed 100 winners in a season 23 times. His total of 3,828 wins makes him the fourth most successful jockey in Great Britain.
Carson’s best season as a jockey came in 1990 when he rode 187 winners. This included six victories at Newcastle Racecourse on 30 June, making him one of only four jockeys to ride six winners at one meeting during the twentieth century. However, he came second in the 1990 jockeys’ championship to Pat Eddery.
Carson had a long association with trainer Major Dick Hern, for whom he rode his first three Derby winners.
In 1980, Carson took over the Minster House Stud at Ampney Crucis near Cirencester and he and his wife Elaine have developed it into a state-of-the-art stud complex. He is the only known jockey since 1900 to have ridden a horse that he bred, Minster Son, to victory in one of the Classic races, the St Leger 1988. He and his then wife Carol had three sons Anthony, Neil and Ross.
In the 1983 New Years Honours List, Carson was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Civil Division for his services to horse racing.[1] This entitled him to the Post Nominal Letters “OBE” for life.
What made his achievements all the more remarkable is that he came from a non-racing background. His Dad, Tommy, was a warehouseman for Fyffes bananas in their native Stirling, and his Mum, May, was a waitress. Both were diminutive and their son, William Fisher Hunter Carson, born in November 1942, took after them. Those unusual middle names? He owes them to an uncle who became a missionary in America.
At school, Carson was often mocked because of his tiny frame, but most bullies were swiftly sent packing as his Dad had bought boxing gloves and given him lessons in self-defence. The word “jockey” would often bubble to the surface and a seed was unwittingly planted when he went to the cinema to see The Rainbow Jacket, a 1954 movie about a youngster who beats the odds to become a top jockey.
What follows is the transcript of a report in the Daily Record Sport By Nicolle Laurie 21 NOV 2012 Updated 11 NOV 2013
Stirling sporting hero Willie Carson celebrated his landmark 70th birthday last week and looked back on the time he made the very first step towards becoming the champion jockey we know and love – in the Allanpark Cinema.Carson was born in Stirling Royal Infirmary on November 16, 1942 and moved to Cornton as a lad where he attended Riverside Primary School and later the Territorial (now Cowane Centre).It was in his home town that the 5ft racing icon first decided to embark on a career that would see him become one of the nation’s most successful sportsmen. He said: “At the age of 11, I went to the Allanpark Cinema in Stirling and saw a movie called the Rainbow Jacket. Robert Morley was in it, whom I rode for years later and Teddy Underdown – I met him later on. “It was about a young kid becoming a jockey and I sort of saw myself as the apprentice on screen. I said ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’ From that day on I was never going to do anything but be a jockey.”
The four-time Derby winner was never workshy and, in his youth, paid for riding classes in Dunblane with his daily paper round. “I had a paper round – which I have since found out no-one really wanted to do – which ran from Cowane Street and did the houses by the Old Stirling Bridge and went round down to Causewayhead. “Then I’d cycle all the way back to the Cornton, I would have had breakfast, changed and then go to school. “I’d do same thing at night, so I was always a fit lad. “It was all for pocket money. In the last couple of years the money was going towards my riding lessons in Dunblane. It was at Dunblane Cathedral Stables run by Mrs McFarlane.”
Now a giant of the racing world – although famously known for standing on a box to reach fellow presenter Clare Balding’s eye level – it seems patriotic Carson has his roots to thank for his move to his first training yard. “She (Mrs McFarlane) got some trainers names and I wrote to them. I ended up going to George Armstrong in Middleham, Yorkshire.
He continued: “When I was in my single-figures youth, we used to play in the woods below Wallace Monument. “The door was always open to the monument. In those days there was a glass case at the top. I don’t recall it being locked, but William Wallace’s sword was at the top. “We got it out of the case, but we could hardly carry it – it was that bloody heavy. We didn’t nick it, we put it back. “And I used to get all my tadpoles from the pools at where Stirling University is now.”
Speaking of his time on ITV’s “I’m A Celebrity” last year, the retired TV racing pundit told of the mental anguish he suffered afterwards and his rather painful encounter with fellow contestant Fatima Whitbread. He said:
“The whole time I was in there I was in agony and always asking for painkillers. Fatima lifted me up and gave me a bear hug from behind and my rib went off like a gun. I had to see a psychiatrist when I came out. I was blaming myself for things. Anyway, they sorted me out and told me not to worry. It is definitely an experience that everybody who goes in will come out a better person for doing it. I certainly feel that I did.”
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