‘The Incomparables’: The remarkable story of Frank Wootton
Francis Leonard Wootton (1893 – 1940), from Australia and known as Frank, was champion jockey of England in 1909-10-11-12 – all before his 19th birthday.
He should have been champion five years straight … but we’ll get to that.
He arguably paved the way for the group which might be happily and appropriately dubbed The Incomparables, the Australian jockeys who dominated in England, Ireland and France well before and long after Bradman’s Invincibles and were every bit as successful as the antipodean tennis champions of the 1950s to the early 1970s.
Frank and his high profile and arguably better known brother Stanley (1895 – 1986) were sons of Dick Wootton, a renowned trainer and punter on the pony tracks and proprietary courses in Sydney according to J. A. Ryan’s biography of Frank Wootton at the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Their great grandparents came to Australia as convicts. The father, it was said, was so intent on the boys becoming jockeys they were purportedly underfed as children.
Frank rode trackwork at the age of nine and was apparently thought by his father to be ready to race ride, but the Australian Jockey Club’s minimum age for a registered jockey was 14. So, Dick moved his family and a team of horses to South Africa – where no such restriction applied – and Frank rode his first winner two months before his 10th birthday!
He and brother Stanley rode with great success in South Africa, as did fellow Australian Bill “Midge” McLachlan, great grandfather of the Freedman brothers of training prowess, who travelled with them as he was apprenticed to Wootton senior. Frank rode his first winner at Turffontein in South Africa at the age of nine.
The Woottons briefly returned to Sydney in 1906, but within six months had moved again to England where Wootton senior was champion trainer in 1913.
Frank rode his first winner in England at 13. In 1909, just before his 16th birthday, he rode his first Classic winner and became the first Australian and youngest ever rider to top the English jockeys’ premiership, with a tally of 165 – a title he would claim for the next three years.
American Danny Maher was the champion jockey immediately before and immediately after Wootton. Anti-gambling sentiment and restrictions on racing led Maher, who died of tuberculosis at just 35, and other jockeys to leave America for Europe where they had quite an impact on European racing. Apparently there was no love lost between Wootton and Maher.
The Jockey Club in 1910 suspended Wootton, described in newspapers at the time as “the famous Australian jockey”, for a period of two months on a foul riding charge prosecuted chiefly at the instigation of Maher.
“The most interesting feature of the incident,” it was reported, “perhaps, is that it is somewhat in the nature of a coincidence. Two seasons ago, in England, Frank Wootton was suspended for a month – also upon Danny Maher’s instigation. The Australian’s enforced idleness in the midst of the season thus cost him the jockey premiership of the old country … and Maher was the winner of the title.”
Thus, it seems it should have been five straight premierships for Wootton.
Why did these visiting riders do so well? Perhaps Wootton and Maher filled a void in the ranks of top, local jockeys; most significantly in the absence of Steve Donoghue, who rode in France and Ireland from 1905 to 1911. Donoghue was champion in England ten years straight from 1914 before the dominant era of Sir Gordon Richards (and later, of course, Lester Piggott).
Australian jockey Bernard “Brownie” Carslake said this of Donoghue: “Stephen can find out more about what is left in his horse with his little finger than most men with their legs and whip.”
But it would be unjust to underestimate the ability of Wootton and Maher. In 1999, the Racing Post ranked Maher as third on their list of the Top 50 jockeys of the 20th century while Wootton was described, again by the Racing Post, as “the most precocious talent ever seen on a British racecourse”.
Wootton’s career, like Maher’s, was cut short. Increasing weight forced him to stop riding on the flat in 1913 when he was still only 19. He later rode over the jumps and was runner-up in the National Hunt title in 1921.
Known as the “Wonderboy” and renowned for his rails riding style and knowledge of his rivals, Wootton won many major races riding on a retainer for wealthy owners such as Sir Edward Hulton, newspaper proprietor and one-time chairman of Manchester City FC, and Lord Derby.
Wootton rode seven winners at the St Leger meeting at Doncaster in 1908; seven at Ascot week in 1912; ten at the Goodwood carnival in 1911 and rode eight consecutive winners during one week in August 1913.
Frank and Stanley served in World War I. Frank served in Palestine and Mesopotamia while his brother reached the rank of Lieutenant and, with the 17th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, he was awarded the Military Cross for rescuing a fellow officer during the Battle of the Somme, France.
When his sons returned from the war, Dick returned to Sydney and established R. Wootton Pty Ltd. (hotel and picture theatre proprietors and property owners) and his holdings included the famous racing pub, the Doncaster Hotel.
Frank Wootton still managed to keep his “eye in” during the War. “Occasionally race meetings were planned and the various divisions would send representatives. Frank Wooton [sic], the well-known jockey, was a dispatch-rider, and usually succeeded in getting leave enough to allow him to ride some general’s horses.” (From War in the Garden of Eden, by Kermit Roosevelt, Captain, Motor Machine-Gun Corps, British Expeditionary Forces).
Frank, having first won a jumping event while serving in Baghdad, began a new career as a National Hunt jockey and trainer after his war service. He was celebrated for his dashing style and risk-taking over the jumps and his wins in that sphere included, in 1921, taking the Imperial Hunt Club Cup on Noce d’Argent, trained by his brother Stanley.
Back in Sydney from 1933, he suffered ill health, perhaps partly due to serious falls and to the exacting regime and weight wasting of his youth. On 6 April 1940 at Central Police Court, Sydney, he was convicted of drunkenness. Later that day he died in Long Bay gaol of traumatic epilepsy and was buried with Catholic rites in Botany cemetery.
Stanley remained a successful trainer of horses and jockeys, from his UK base at Epsom, until 1962.
He made frequent visits to Australia and is best known, of course, for exporting Star Kingdom to Australia.
From the mid-1950s he was notable as a breeder and owner in New South Wales; he invested in stud properties and sent out selected horses including Star Kingdom, who stood at Baramul Stud, and produced a notable thoroughbred bloodline in Australia; his progeny included the stallions Todman, Biscay and Bletchingly, the Derby winners Sky High and Skyline and the first five winners of the Sydney Turf Club’s Golden Slipper Stakes. In Sydney, Wootton’s wins as an owner included the Golden Slipper with Todman in 1957 and the Australian Jockey Club’s Epsom Handicap with Noholme in 1959.
Stanley Wootton died on 21 March 1986 at Epsom, England, and was buried in the cemetery there. His wife and their daughter Catherine Remond, a successful thoroughbred breeder in Australia, survived him.
The Wootton family’s influence on Australia’s breeding and racing industry was remarkable and, unsurprisingly, the family was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002. I fancy there’s a strong case that the brothers could well have been inducted individually.