Kelly Morgan (left, with Poppy Shaw, Tom Chatfeild-Roberts and Go Go Geronimo) comes from a family steeped in racing and pointing. Brother Tommy, a farrier, trained 2016/2017 champion pointer Lough Inch, father Kevin trained professionally, and sister Laura now does so with great success. Kelly – who had ten winners as a rider – herself held a licence for two years, during which time Top Wood won the 2019 Aintree Foxhunters. Since her return to the point-to-point ranks, she has proved herself once of the shrewdest keepers in the sport – last season she won 20 races between the flags from just 11 horses at a strike rate of 40%, as well as taking a Hunter Chase at Cheltenham with Feuille De Lune. That exciting mare may have gone under rules, but Kelly has plenty of ammunition for the coming campaign, including new recruits Due Reward for the same owners – The Snail Syndicate – and classy Go Go Geronimo for the Chatfeild-Roberts family. South Midlands Area Press Officer Jake Exelby went to Foxfield Stud to talk to Kelly about her plans for 2022-2023.
Arriving at the yard, Kelly is planning to work all nine pointers currently stabled at her Waltham-on-the-Wolds yard, which she shares with Laura. First, maidens Doctor Tom (Tom Chatfeild-Roberts, who will ride four horses for Kelly this season) and Double Click (fellow jockey Paddy Barlow), Due Reward (Alfie Brewitt), Open winner Overworkdunderpaid (Shane Fenton) and Smoke Man (Poppy Shaw) warm-up in the manege before four spins round the Morgan all-weather. We then box the prolific Blazing Tom (Paddy), ex-French Chahuteur (Alfie), an unraced Passing Glance six-year-old (Shane) and stable star Go Go Geronimo (Poppy) up to the nearby gallops, on the site of a former racecourse on the Belvoir estate, for two spins up the woodchip gallop. Poppy is beaming as her workout comes to an end and Kelly tells me fondly, “She’s only 16 and is doing an apprenticeship with me to get into racing. She’s local, a good rider, and she rides Go Go Geronimo every day – she adores him.” Poppy herself admits modestly, “I do have ambitions to point-to-point, not this season but maybe next.”
The two Toms (L-R, Doctor and Blazing) say hello
Kelly hopes to run 11 or 12 horses this campaign, and Due Reward was her first runner at Larkhill last weekend and is entered again at Chaddesley Corbett. “I’ve only got ten boxes, but some will run early and others come in later, including Runwiththetide – a mare I’ve bought to syndicate – and Santon, who also runs for the Chatfeild-Roberts family and will be ridden by Tom’s partner Meisha Micklewright,” she says. Asked for three to follow, she gives me these names:
Due Reward
“Won four in Ireland for Henry de Bromhead and was useful. He then came over here to run for Charlie Longsdon and didn’t win but was placed a few times and I bought him privately from Charlie after the Doncaster August Sales. He wants good ground, and the aim will be short distance Hunter Chases later in the season, like the two-and-a-half-miler at Cheltenham or the two-miler at Stratford that I won with Decade Player a few years ago.”
Due Reward leading up the round gallop
Go Go Geronimo
“Still eligible for Intermediates and will start in a Conditions race at Alnwick. He’s a big burly horse, who’ll take a race to sharpen up, and stays well. He’ll then go for a Hunter Chase at the end of January then – hopefully – straight for the Cheltenham Foxhunters, as I want to send him there fresh. He’s got to improve by 10-12lbs to be competitive, but he could do it – he’s got plenty of experience but is only seven and don’t forget he started last year as a maiden.”
Coming up the woodchip
Overworkdunderpaid
“Loves the mud and will go to the first Alnwick meeting, then go back there in January. The main aim this season is the Walrus Hunter Chase at Haydock, in which he was third last year. He needs proper bottomless ground and didn’t like it at Cheltenham. George Chatterton will ride him again.”
Kelly's string in the manege
Aside from the Chatfeild-Roberts and Chatterton horses, most of Kelly’s runners this campaign will be ridden by Alice Stevens. “She’s a talented rider who’s under-rated and should get more rides,” she states. “But I think it will all kick-off for her this season. I first came across Alice when Gina Andrews couldn’t ride Red Indian at Bishops Court – she was recommended, I met her for the first time that day, and they won by 50 lengths! I’m a loyal person, so she’s ridden for me since then.”
Plans for the season covered, we talk about Kelly’s background and – specifically – how she got into pointing, having come from a rules background. “Mum was with Andrew Sansome when he trained pointers from this yard,” she explains, “While Dad trained up the road. I used to ride out before school – I was the only one in the family interested in riding, as opposed to training – had my first mount in a point-to-point on Astonville, for Andrew, just after my 16th birthday and rode my first winner on him later that same season. In total, I won 11 points – although I lost one because the owner wasn’t a PPORA member! – and one race under rules.”
“I then went to work for Johnny Weatherby for nearly ten years, starting out as a polo groom,” Kelly continues. “I didn’t race-ride when I first worked for him because he didn’t want me to get injured, but we had good old Valance, who was 14 and had won seven points, and Johnny said I should train and ride him. We didn’t have a gallop or any proper facilities at Preston Lodge (the Weatherby base) and I don’t think he had high expectations, but we won the Members at Garthorpe first time out together. I love Garthorpe – I’ve been going since I was a little kid and it’s great to have family and friends cheering you on.”
“I retired from the saddle in 2016 because I knew I’d be taking out a rules licence as private trainer to Johnny,” admits Kelly. “It was frustrating because I was at the top of my game, was the leading lady rider in the Midlands and wasn’t ready to retire. I was riding good horses like Sharp Suit, Top Smart… and Lough Inch. I won four out of four on him and it was like steering a motorbike. I can’t describe the feeling he’d give me – it was an absolute dream as he jumped and travelled so well. He’s still here and still a star – he does Retraining of Racehorses and was second at the Horse of the Year Show. But,” she adds, going back to her retirement, “I needed to focus on one thing – and that was training.”
It was during Kelly’s time training for Johnny that she achieved her most notable success to date, when Top Wood won the 2019 Aintree Foxhunters, having finished third and second in the past two runnings of the Cheltenham equivalent. “Finishing second at Cheltenham was incredible,” she says. “Sam (Davies-Thomas) was going to retire and had it in his head that he was going to win. The horse was 50/1 and people thought he was crazy, but he’d won two points easily and had form round Cheltenham. Sam was so disappointed to be beaten a neck – he wanted to retire on a Foxhunters winner.”
“Aintree the next year was completely different,” Kelly goes on. “He’d stood on a nail the day before and was very lame, so I didn’t think we’d go. I stayed up all night icing his foot, put him on the walker at 4.30am and thought, ‘He’s sound.’ I called Alex Knott, my vet, who came at 6am and said we could run. I hadn’t schooled him over Aintree-style fences because I thought he might over-jump, but I knew after the third (Chair) that he’d be OK as he wasn’t too exuberant. It was unbelievable, and great for Tabitha (Worsley), who’s a good friend.”
“We didn’t get home until 10.30,” she confirms of her post-race celebrations, but the landlord of our local – the Royal Horseshoes in Waltham – put dinner on for us and we had a Foxhunters party at the pub that summer. Watching the race again on a big screen was a fantastic buzz. My funniest moment in racing was also after his Aintree win,” recalls Kelly with a smile. “We were talking to Princess Anne and Johnny said to her, ‘Kelly has sweetened him up by taking him round the farm.’ I turned round and said, ‘Johnny, he hates going round the farm – he likes his routine and goes on the gallop every day.’ The look on his face was priceless!”
I ask Kelly why she only held her rules licence for two full seasons before returning to the pointing scene. “I only had six horses, all of whom belonged to Johnny,” she explains. “He didn’t want to continue racing under rules with a private trainer and I didn’t want to train pointers just for him, as I had before, so I went on my own.” Surely it must have been difficult to find owners, after almost ten years with Johnny? “Luckily, I’d grown up in the area and hunted a lot, so I knew quite a few people. I bumped into Tom Chatfeild-Roberts and his mother Doone one day and, when they said Tom’s aunt Helen Connors was stopping training, I told them I had a small yard of my own. His father John sent me a few horses first and I’d soon filled my ten boxes. Other people said they’d have had a horse with me if they’d known I was training pointers again, and it would be nice to build a few more boxes next season, but I don’t want to get too big, and I’ve got no plans to take out a licence again – anything that I think would benefit from racing under rules can go to Laura.”
Warming down after work
I enquire about the secret of the Morgan siblings’ success (like Kelly, Laura has a fine strike rate, as did Tommy when he was training). “I’m competitive to the point of being obsessed,” laughs Kelly. “Every penny we earn goes on our horses – I’d rather a horse has a new rug than I get some new clothes! And the three of us have similar ideas, which we bounce off each other. We train speed into our horses, don’t over-gallop or over-school them and do a lot of interval training, which teaches them to travel strongly. We have a system, and it works – horses like routine.”
With Kelly willing to take on more horses, how would she encourage growth in pointing’s equine population? “That’s a tough question,” she replies. “We’re not doing it for financial gain, and we need to make it affordable, so I’d encourage people through syndicates. But why do meetings only give you two owners passes?” she asks rhetorically. “You get six or eight under rules and why should people pay to watch their horses run? If you give owners more passes, they’ll spend money at the meeting and hopefully go again when they don’t have a runner. I know the fixtures need to make money but, if there are no horses, they won’t get the crowds.”
“I am concerned about the lack of horses,” continues Kelly in the same vein. “Commercially, horses from English points are making more money and long gone are the days when every local farmer has a pointer they train at home, but it’s an expensive game. For example, it costs me as much to keep a horse as it does Laura and costs are going up all the time – bedding, feed, wages… If you cut costs, you don’t get results. And if you don’t have winners, you won’t be sent horses.”
We close our conversation with a final word on why she loves pointing, Kelly smiles again. “We always have a laugh, win, lose or draw. Come to the box and you’re bound to hear me cackling!”