Barnsley Burglars revel in fruitful Scottish raid

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Peter Winks (centre) with the promising Grow Nasa Grow and (from left) partner Karen Vickers, ex-wife Lynn Winks, Madi Patzelt and Ryan Winks

PICTURE: Louise Pollard

By Julian Muscat 4:30PM 16 FEB 2016

IF HORSERACING were ever to feature as the backdrop for a whimsical illustration of working-class aspiration, replete with Yorkshire humour, it would have to be based around Peter Winks’s Homefield Stables.

The setting alone paints an enticing picture. Driving west from Doncaster, you enter the hamlet of Little Houghton, a suburb of Barnsley, to discover the stables at the end of a residential street. A line of houses rises up behind the row of seven boxes which face out towards a multi-purpose paddock. And there, smack in the middle of the yard, a photographer is happily snapping at a horse with a chicken perched high on its neck.

Winks is not entirely sure what to make of it. Attention has gravitated towards the permit-holder who won the Scottish Champion Chase the weekend before last. Chestnut Ben’s victory cast a welcome spotlight on the man who will soon take possession of a full trainer’s licence. A visitor to the yard is expressing concrete interest in buying a horse, yet Winks and Chestnut Ben play second fiddle to a farmyard creature by the name of Fez.

The photographer can hardly believe it. He asks for Dashing George to be brought out of his box with Fez in tow. His camera shutter works overtime, mindful he may have only a few seconds to capture the image, yet all the while Fez stands proudly below Dashing George’s ears. She has no intention of moving.

“Best not let photographer see horse with saddle on,” Winks, 59, confides with a wry smile. “Chicken would jump into it like a shot.”
Fez’s arrival at Homefield was almost the final act in her young life. “I were strimming the grass over by the rails one day and nearly took its head off,” Winks says, perhaps wishing that he had. “It can seem a bit crazy round here sometimes but we all love it. We don’t earn a lot out of it, but we love every minute.”

Fez surveys the yard from atop the neck of Dashing George

PICTURE: Louise Pollard

What Winks earned from Chestnut Ben’s victory was more valuable than money. It earned him respect, not least from Nicky Henderson, who saddled the beaten favourite at Musselburgh. “I had to apologise to Nicky afterwards,” Winks says, sheepishly. “I went a bit over the top in the heat of the moment. He said he thought I were going to hit him, but he were delighted for us really.”

It wasn’t Chestnut Ben’s victory alone that generated headlines for an outfit licensed to train from seven boxes, each of which is occupied. Winks’s son Ryan, who rode the winner, had spent 15 years as the singer in a band that travelled extensively. With Derek Thompson’s prompting, Ryan broke into a rendition of We Are The Champions on the winners’ podium.

“Being in the band was Dad’s fault,” Ryan, 35, recalls. “He was in a band himself [he played bass guitar] and I fell into it when I was 17. I was apprenticed to Les Eyre at the time but I was getting too heavy. Dad asked me what I was playing at; told me to ride over the sticks instead. He wasn’t happy.”

Father and son went their separate ways, although what would prove an exciting development for Ryan had the opposite effect on Peter. While his son joined a series of cruise liners touring Scandinavia and the Mediterranean for six weeks at a time, Peter went to work as a joiner.

By that time Peter had already made his mark. As a youngster his father would throw him over the perimeter fence at racecourses and meet him on the inside. Although he rode a lot, he was too heavy to work as a stable lad. He pottered about in between bringing home the bacon; one day he bought an in-foal mare and rode the subsequent foal to win an amateur riders’ race at Southwell.

“It were a fabulous feeling,” he reflects. “And I thought, ‘I’ve got to find a way to keep doing this’. I did everything with that horse. I used to train it on the pit stacks of Houghton Main colliery not far from here. The surface were like silt and you had to be careful. It were always warm underneath, no matter the time of year.

“I ended up riding 23 winners in all,” he continues. “I did a lot of pointing but one day I smashed myself up badly and that were that.”
Winks was undeterred. He continued to win races on the point-to-point circuit, among them the prestigious Lord Bicester Cup with Plenty Of Chat, who he had bought out of Tim Vaughan’s stable for £1,200.

“You should have seen the size of the trophy,” Winks reflects with a grin. “It were so big they wouldn’t let us take it home. I told them, ‘Hang on a minute, we’re not going to melt it down, you know. We’re not all robbers in Barnsley’.”

On he soldiered, taking pleasure where he could, until Ryan rang one day with a change of heart. “I said: ‘Come on Dad, let’s have another go,'” says Ryan, who took out an amateur licence. “That was in 2009 and I’ve loved every minute of being back. I wish I hadn’t got out of it now but I reckon I’ve still got five years left in the saddle.”

Not that his weighing-room colleagues will let him forget his past. “After Musselburgh, I got plenty of stick at Carlisle the next time I rode,” he says. “I said I should never have opened my gob, but they said it were good for racing. They said next time I should sing Simply The Best.”

“Yeah,” says Peter, “if you come off next time it’ll have to be ‘Simply A Mess’.”

Ryan Winks belts out We Are The Champions at Musselburgh

PICTURE: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

FATHER and son are now doing what Peter hoped they would 20 years ago, since when much has changed. Peter is now divorced from his wife Lynn, although she still lives and works at Homefield, from where she also runs Goldstar Entertainment UK, an agency that provides live music acts – among them Ryan, who still keeps his hand in to top up the coffers. Meanwhile, Peter’s partner Karen rides out and travels the horses to the races.

The family circle was completed by Peter’s uncle, Ron, who died in November. Peter’s voice drops a couple of octaves when he emphasises Ron’s contribution. “He were so good to us,” he says. “We couldn’t have done what we’ve done without him. The last horse he bought were the most expensive we’ve ever had, a lovely store for £24,000 – plus VAT of course, which you don’t get back.”

Now a five-year-old, Grow Nasa Grow finished third in a bumper on his debut nine months ago, after which the family received an offer from Harry Fry. “It were very big, I’ll say that, but we couldn’t take it because of uncle Ron,” he says. “The horse is there in the yard in memory of him.”

Grow Nasa Grow is a rare inmate at Homefield to arrive unraced. The others are predominantly cast-offs, most of them with individual requirements too time-consuming for the bigger stables to entertain.

Hartside, who added to the stable’s delight by turning over an odds-on favourite in a Catterick handicap hurdle under Ryan yesterday, is a
case in point, having begun his racing career as a two-year-old with
Sir Michael Stoute before a spell in Ireland.

Chestnut Ben was a little different though: he came to Winks when his former trainer retired in October 2014.

“Russell Lee owned the horse and he’s a friend of mine,” the trainer says. “Because he were moving house at the time he had nowhere for Ben to go, so he sold him to me for a fiver on the understanding that if I got my full licence I’d sell the horse back to him.”

Winks believes Chestnut Ben, now 11, is still improving. If that’s true it is almost certainly down to the gelding thriving on the individual attention he receives at Homefield and, even with the imminent arrival of his full licence, Winks does not envisage expanding beyond a dozen horses.

“It has always been my dream to have a full licence,” he says. “I applied for one 25 years ago and they just laughed at me; said I didn’t have enough experience.”

The tangible sense of achievement around Homefield Stables is best highlighted by the pride Winks draws from the sobriquet bestowed on him by residents of the weighing room. “They call us the Barnsley Burglars because most of our runners come back with something,” he says with a smile.

“We’ve got a great little set-up here, with emphasis on the little. Some of the horses are more piece-of-bread than thoroughbred, but they do well for us. It’s been a long road, and sometimes a tough one, but in racing, the good days are unbeatable. We hope to have a few more yet.”

Read more brilliant columns and interviews every day in the Racing Post – also available on iPad

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