Charlie Poste’s list of current roles would fill a lifetime’s work for many people.
This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 24th November.
A breaker and pre-trainer, purchaser of stores and pinhooker of point-to-pointers, assistant trainer to his wife, Fran, who runs a yard in Warwickshire, jockey coach to eight riders, assessor of Category A applicants for the British Racing School, plus media pundit on radio and digital viewing channels, including the Racing Post’s.
To which he has now added chairman of the Point-to-Point Owners’ & Riders’ Association (PPORA) which also gives him a seat on the influential Point-to-Point Authority (PPA) Board. Phew, just typing that lot was exhausting.
Ex-jump jockey Poste will no doubt slip into his new appointment effortlessly, although he admits: “The weeks are just not long enough at the moment.” That comment was made ahead of a 5am alarm and lorry drive to Cornwall and back for a point-to-point where Fran saddled two runners.
Poste, whose 2011 Welsh National win on Le Beau Bai was a highlight of his time as a jockey, did not start race riding in point-to-points – unlike younger brother Ben – but he and Fran have helped numerous amateurs experience the thrill of riding in such races. Luke Scott and Alice Stevens are two who have since progressed to the ranks of conditional jockeys.
He says of his acceptance to represent owners and riders: “I can only say the usual cliché about giving something back to the sport. Mark Buchan [outgoing chair] spoke to me about it and asked for my thoughts and I said I’d think about it. The next thing, my name was announced – I didn’t think about the position it would give me on the board. It came as an afterthought, but it’s a great situation to be in.
“Fran is on a number of committees and we want to be involved in the sport and its future. After all, we earn part of our living from it.”
Poste will be sitting around a top table which, it was announced last week, will be chaired by former licensed trainer Caroline Bailey, who takes over from Andrew Merriam. More immediately, Poste wants to “touch base with members of the PPORA to see what they would like to see happening within the sport”.
Race planning is but one subject in which he takes a keen interest, and he would like to consider “conditions races for horses that have reached a peak rating of 105 [under Rules]”. He says such horses are often affordable because they are not in huge demand, but would be competitive in the type of race he describes. Given that many amateurs work for licensed trainers, he would like restrictions on Category A licensed riders to be reviewed, saying: “Because Cat A restricts riders to amateur races only small trainers prefer such riders to become conditional jockeys in order to use their claim in more races. That means we lose them from point-to-pointing, yet most don’t last long as conditionals.”
More contentiously hovers the subject of allowing licensed trainers to run horses in point-to-points. He says: “I would be supportive of that. If running a maiden they could use whichever amateur they wanted, but if running older horses in open races, they would be restricted to using novice riders from their own yard.”
That would mean a four-year-old pointer, that he and Fran had bought the previous year and hoped to sell, could meet a high-value acquisition from a licensed yard. He says: “If that happened I’d be delighted. If we beat it fairly, the licensed trainer will want to buy ours.”
