Shock jock: How a kid from Stevenage shook up the racing world

Alan Munro led in on Generous after their Derby win at Epsom in 1991.

So you are in school, you are 15, bored with the lesson and are daydreaming about your future. This was Alan Munro at Barnwell. At just 24, you are a Derby-winning jockey at Epsom. And for good measure, with the same horse, Generous, you've added the Irish Derby and then the country’s top Flat race for open-age horses, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Royal Ascot. Not bad for a Stevenage lad who had never been on a horse, let alone ridden one until his final year at school, and only got a job in racing after his parents wrote to 200 stables to see if he could get a leg-up in the Sport of Kings. Alan is 5ft 2in and, as someone who would into exactly tower above him, I can only imagine some of the stick he got from his fellow pupils. It probably helped, to a point that his biggest pal, Jonathan Weekes, was the tallest in the school.

Jonathan later became a fencer who competed for Northern Ireland in a Commonwealth Games - and was once a body double for a Bond villain in the movie Die Another Day. That’s the long and the short of it. Alan’s career has been every bit as international as 007’s. He has ridden races in France, Italy, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and now in Seoul, South Korea. “I could never have imagined travelling so much, having experienced so much and had some of the successes I have had. To be honest, it is a shame I was so young when I won the Derby. I didn’t really fully appreciate it at the time.”

Alan talks through a winner in Hong Kong

So how did a Stevenage lad, living miles from the nearest racecourse or thorooughbred yard get into the sport in the first place? “I saw a story about a jockey called Steve Cauthen, who the press dubbed the 'Six-Million Dollar Kid'." That’s because when still a young man, that’s how much the gifted American had won in prize money in a calendar year. “He was amazing, some kind of superstar, and it made the lights in my head light up. I knew at that moment what I was going to become,” Alan recalls. Alan’s first time in a horse was with a stable run by Trina Lewis in Langley, outside Hitchin. “I had this arrangement where I would get free lessons in return for working for her there at the weekends. "I loved it and told my parents I wanted to go for a career in racing and they fully supported me.

"My careers officer warned me off, saying it was dangerous and that only a very few make a career from it. And she was right of course but I am one of the lucky ones - and here I am at 53 still race riding. “It’s my plan to ride until I’m 60 and to do my last year in England. Much will depend on injuries, though. I am out at the moment with a broken wrist; it’s been pinned and I hope to back racing in another week’s time”.

He recalls his first job interview. “I was so nervous when I met Barry Hills in Lambourn. In those days there were no apprentice schools, so you just went straight into a yard and learnt in your own time. I was only 5st 7lb, so they used to just put me up on big hunters which are very safe and slow and, after a while, you progress on to quiet thoroughbreds and slowly your strength and physic develops” “I can remember my first race like it was yesterday. It was a beautiful moment and is still a beautiful memory. It was somehow a moment of purity. He has had many winners, but Generous shot Alan Munro to worldwide fame. “He was something else. That summer he took everyone’s breath away. He won the Derby easily. When I asked him to quicken he nearly left me behind It was like he could fly, that horse.

“I rode him in four Group races and he was just amazing. He won the Derby by five lengths and to know so far out that I had it won was incredible, very exciting.”

After that Derby win, Alan went back to his old school, at the invitation of teacher Grahame Bowles, who still follows Alan’s progress closely.

Graham recalls: “We were having a fundraising event - for his charity, named So Generous after his Derby winner - for a condition his disabled sister suffered from, and Alan was the celebrity attraction. “I remember we stunted up a picture of him sitting on a pantomime horse called Dobbin! I wish I could recall the names of the girls in that costume!

"He was a great sport and we are all proud of him and he is rightly in the town’s Walk of Fame at the Leisure Centre. At school, Alan recalls, he was never terribly good at sports. “I think my biggest achievement was some sort of record, though - walking on my hands for something like 132 steps!” of his size. “I think my biggest achievement was some sort of record, though - walking on my hands for something like 132 steps - as I remember it that’s three tennis courts in length. Another of Alan’s big successes was aboard Sergeant Cecil, an older horse who had showed little of his potential before Alan rode him for Rod Millman’s Devon stable. Millman said: “Alan was undoubtedly the key to this horse, who had to be held back and not run himself out early in the race.” This was 2005 and Alan was back in the UK after a 10-year stint in Hong Kong. “The penny just dropped for the horse and somehow that year he just came of age. He was an undiscovered marathon runner who could sprint at the end of the race and that sprint made him very special and soon he became the most popular racehorse in England. “We won three top handicaps with him in the same season - a triple crown that had never been achieved before. It meant keeping both horse and jockey fit and in top form from June until October and it involved an awful amount of luck to win three marathons in a row.”

Alan boots home Sergeant Cecil

They were the “Pitmen’s Derby” the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle, the Ebor at York and then the Cesarewitch at Newmarket, racing’s Headquarters. “I’ve ridden in England for only about 10 years in total, 10 straight seasons in Hong Kong, six short-term contracts in Japan, eight years in Singapore and now I’m in my second year in South Korea. I’ve really enjoyed it everywhere but I am looking forward to coming home eventually,” he says.

Alan acquired some other new skills since living in the Far East - he is a black belt at karate. “In my early thirties, I took a five-year sabbatical from racing and studied karate full time. At my age now I can see how it’s helped me keep my body young. I still look old though, unfortunately! “In Korea we have riders from France, Brazil, Cyprus, South Africa and even a Serbian. They are all good riders. The Korean jocks are also very good and, more importantly, are lovely people, too” . “I don’t know what it is about Stevenage producing so many amazing sportsmen. And how did a guy from a concrete jungle go on to be a jockey when there isn’t a racecourse for miles around? Yeah, I sometimes wonder that,” he muses.

Perhaps his next visit to town will be to see if that panto horse is still out grazing at Barnwell - as he tries to ply his trade back here into his early 60s. The finishing post is still far from sight for Alan Munro, it seems.