A powerful light is shone in a shocking new short film on the abuse, pain, exhaustion and mental health suffering that go hand-in-hand with being a jockey.
The Fall follows a jump jockey, ‘Tom’, from the end of one race to the start of his next. The space between is a microcosm of what it means to be a jockey.
The movie starts with a tumble at the last fence in a race Tom and his mount, Habitare, would otherwise have won. They’re both unhurt, and, as Tom drives home, alone, he takes a call from the trainer who tells him the owners no longer want him to ride their horses. He gets a barrage of sick social media abuse, too, before getting home late, upset and exhausted, to reassure his partner that all is well.
According to the filmmaker, Nathan Horrocks (left), the premise is simple. “It’s about a jockey going through the struggles of a bad day at the office.
“I wanted to show the world that athletes are human. There are huge pressures to their job, from diet to travel to finance. If things don’t go right, and they don’t go right more often in racing than other sports, jockeys lose 80 percent of the time. Be careful with actions and words.”
The message, he says, is to be kind, and ask for help if you’re a struggling jockey.
As a former jump jockey, he knows the challenges intimately. Jockeys are, “a certain type of person, busy, always on the front foot and tough, and there’s a weight to carry with that sometimes”.
After losing far too many of his close colleagues who had taken their own lives, he felt this was an important story to tell.
How realistic is the film?
Very, says Racheal Kneller, a recently retired flat jockey. “There is no other sport where two ambulances follow you around,” she says. “The public don’t realise what a hard life it is.”
Kneller was forced into early retirement due to a concussion injury that meant she would be unable to pass a medical. While racing, she spent six months out when a horse reared over onto her on the gallops with a broken back and pelvis. The pelvis injury was only diagnosed while trampolining in rehab.
Making the weight is a constant battle. Kneller (left) paid twice-daily visits to the gym (“and I hate the gym!”) and recalls losing 12lbs in three days for a ride at Southwell by power-walking (less energy required) in a sweat suit, sucking ice cubes of Coca Cola (for the sugar) and picking at crackers. And all this before getting on a half-ton animal, using energy, strength and brainpower to give it every chance to run its best race.
On the day, she had 2lb more to lose, and drove (alone) to the course in a sweat suit with the heater on. She arrived, nauseous and faint, and was carried by the valet to the sauna (the back way so the clerk of the scales didn’t see her), undressed and plonked in the shower. The valet thought she shouldn’t ride, but she sucked ice cubes, raced, finished in the mid division - better than expected - and connections “were really happy”.
That drive home, feeling tired, hungry, lonely and miserable with just your own worst thoughts is a particularly isolating experience.
Horrocks says, “The only time you feel part of a team is in the changing room. That’s your sanctuary because everyone is in the same boat. They’re all trying to steal your ride, but you’re all looking after each other as well.”
‘It’s like someone taking your child away’
He says he got so low, he recalls journeys home when he thought, ‘That central reservation looks really attractive right now.’
Kneller says, “You’re your own worst critic.” So getting ‘jocked off’, often from a horse that the jockey has ridden out, brought on and come to know and love, feels brutal.
Horrocks says, “It’s like someone taking your child away. That’s how jockeys feel about their horses.”
Often, jockeys haven’t had a winner through no fault of their own, and there’s a financial pressure too: No race ride, no pay. Just as success begets success (“there’s a reason Frankie Dettori rides so many winners - he’s on the best horses” notes Kneller) no winners begets no winners.
The social media abuse that Tom gets in the film is, shockingly, verbatim from real messages.
According to research, 86 percent of jockeys receive abuse and 85 percent of that is characterised as severe.
“I hope your kids die of cancer” or “I’ll be waiting for you in the car park”.
It’s impossible to imagine that being told to “be kind” would register at all with the writers. Kneller was messaged, “I hope you die of cancer,” and one regular would message on a race-day, “I don’t know why she doesn’t give up, she’s useless.”
She says, “It’s spiteful, it’s bullying, and jockeys are mentally fragile because of the diet and the highs and lows of the sport.”
Sometimes she’d retweet the abuse so that her supporters could respond, or block them, ignore them or laugh at them, but it all cut very deep - and this as athletes are encouraged to be open and accessible role models, and jockeys phone numbers are easy to find.
Sports psychologist Michael Caulfield, a former chief executive of what is now the Professional Jockeys’ Association (PJA), says this direct abuse is as personally invasive as having a burglar in your house. “It’s like flinging open the windows and doors, coming into the kitchen and 300 people are saying, ‘I hate you’.” He’s counselled plenty of jockeys, noting “Often they are just exhausted.”
His goal is to help them solve their own problems. “Once they do that, it’s freedom,” he says.
‘Living, breathing, emotional human beings’
Caulfield knows their mindset. They’re “not like you and me”. It’s not everyone who would choose to ride with a broken collarbone, having not eaten for three days. He adds, “There is a view that sportspeople are hard-nosed and tough and resilient, and jockeys are all those plus VAT, but they are also living, breathing, emotional human beings.”
Times have changed, and through the Injured Jockeys Fund, the PJA and others, there are experts available in every field, from psychiatry to nutrition to drug and alcohol abuse, but as Caulfield says, “It is and will always be a really big moment in a person’s life to say ‘can you help me?’. It’s a very private moment to speak to someone about your feelings.”
Kneller took that step, and says the counselling she received via the Jockey Club was “really helpful”. And, for all the strife of her racing career, she loved it so deeply, and misses it so much, that since she retired she hasn’t been able to watch a single flat race.
In the film, there’s a happy ending. Tom is back in the weighing room, in silks, and, after a brief pep talk from his valet, he makes his way, again, to the parade ring. His magnificent charge, oblivious to what has come before, awaits.
The Fall (thefallfilm.com) can be seen on Sky Sports.