BENOIT DE LA SAYETTE “I was never a champion, but I had 70-odd
“For a 15-year-old, to ride horses by Galileo and Dubawi was unbelievable. My friends were going to
accountancy firms for their work experience!”
“My dad sent me over there not really to ride,
but to improve my French speaking,” recalls the bilingual de la Sayette. “He said, ‘You might as well learn an extra language and do something you like at the same time.’ “I was eight when I had three rides in France in 2011. In the UK, they start from the age of nine, and I was going backwards and forwards from France – doing the Point-To-Point Series in the UK from around December to June, and then pony racing in France over the space of about five to six years.
winners in the UK and France.” During the Easter holidays, the 11-year-old de la
Sayette rode work on thoroughbreds in the care of James Fanshawe, by then his father’s employer. “It was there where I sat on a racehorse for the
first time properly,” he remembers. “Mr Fanshawe said, ‘If you want to come and ride out in the holidays and weekends, you’re more than welcome. “I used to go with my father every holiday and
every Saturday from the age of 11 to 15.” While with bin Suroor, Geoffroy had ridden out
with Tony Proctor, the ex-jockey charged with putting Dubai Millennium through his exercise regimen before going on to be Gosden’s travelling head lad. And it was a chance encounter between the
pair, at the petrol pumps of the BP garage on Newmarket’s Bury Road, that was to shape the teenager’s destiny. “I was 15 and in Year 10 you do work experience. My father either wanted to send me to André
Benoit on hat-trick partner Hint Of Stars ((c) John Hoy The Jockey Club) Watch here
24 RACING TV CLUBMAGAZINE
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