ON FRIDAY I was at Sandown and caught up with Gary Witheford.
Some people refer to Gary as ‘the horse whisperer’, but I simply think of him as an expert stalls handler.
Gary has a reputation in the industry of being able to ‘break’ horses in less than half-an-hour. In other words, he identifies a range of problems which might affect a horse and comes up with solutions.
Some horses get nervous at the stalls, some don’t like the stalls to touch them. I don’t know Gary personally, but from what I can see he’s a very good stock man who really knows his animals.
The reason we spoke is because on Saturday I was set to ride for Brendan Powell at Wolverhampton on a mare called Graffiti Art. She’s a grand lass but can sometimes be a little temperamental going into the stalls.
Gary said to keep things simple. Get a leg up yourself; don’t have two or three people crowding around and putting her on edge. He also said that she has a tendency to flip over, which means she rears up and flips back on herself.
If she does do that, Gary said, don’t get back on because she’ll do some real damage. Again this might sound obvious but it’s not rocket science and it’s often the simplest of details that most people don’t pick up on. As humans, we tend to make things harder than they should be and like a great author he starts with a blank page.
One afternoon I saw a horse fall flat. He just wouldn’t go in the stalls. Normally, you’d push them in from their backside or from their tail, but Gary lifted him underneath the girth, got the horse level with the gate and got one lad either side to just lifted his belly up off the floor which made the horse walk forward.
Gary, along with his son Craig, work together and are called all over the country. They probably clock up even more miles than us jockeys. It makes you wonder if stall handlers would benefit from some time spent training alongside Gary.
Again it boils down to money which the industry doesn’t want to stump up.
The stable handlers are mostly ex-jockeys and stable staff that have worked around horses their whole lives and do a brilliant job — and they aren’t paid a huge amount either and anything to make their job easier should be encouraged.
If Gary had a jumps equivalent it would be Yogi Breisner, who trains Olympic jumping teams, and has been in the horse industry for more than 35 years. Perhaps we will go into Yogi another time.
I should finish by saying congratulations to William Muir, who had a great win on Stepper Point, ridden by Martin Dwyer, at The Curragh on Sunday. The horse had been banging on the door and won a good pot on Sunday and fair play to them.
See More: Comment & Analysis, Gary Witheford, Stall Handlers
