Robert Winston: The drink, drugs and demons that I battled during my career

Drink, drugs and demons. Robert Winston provided compelling viewing on Racing TV when talking about the battles he faced during his highly successful career.

Many believe he would have been crowned champion jockey in 2005 but for a catastrophic injury that he suffered at Ayr.

He bounced back to ride 136 winners the following year and again prove himself as being among the best in the weighing-room.

But the highs were laced with lows.

He suffered in silence: battling addiction, flashbacks and mental health issues. Drink and drugs took their toll after serious injury.

Many of his colleagues who had known him for decades were unaware until his appearance on Racing TV’s weekly show The Friday Club.

Amidst it all, he was also banned for a year by a BHA disciplinary panel - being one of four jockeys found guilty of passing on information for reward. To this day, he says he was innocent.

The 39-year-old retired from riding last month, citing an “amalgamation of reasons” for his decision.

He has recently set up a new business rehabilitating horses with his fiancée, Victoria, and is also looking to keep his eye in on the racing front.

Rarely has a jockey spoken so openly. Here’s what he had to say on a range of subjects.

I was riding with confidence, my weight was very good and stable at about 8st 5lb. I was having lots of winners, as many as five a day.

I had ridden in a race previously [that night] and my horse was slipping on the bend. I wasn’t very happy.

It was long, lush grass and the horses were not getting any grip. They did have a course inspection and carried on. I was in a position where I had to ride, really, as I was leading the championship by two.

I got kneed in the jaw from the horse behind [after being unseated]. I think I would have got up and walked away if it wasn’t for that kick into the face [which followed from another horse behind].

I knew my teeth were gone; I knew my jaw was on one side of my face; I knew I was in an awful bad way. It felt like my head was going to explode.

I remember someone came to see me at the hospital and I actually wrote out on a piece of paper “tell everybody that I loved them. I don’t think I’ll survive”. It was awful.

When I went to one hospital they had to move me to another because they couldn’t deal with facial injury.

I had to wait 24 hours for an operation from a specialist.

With the morphine I was on, I was sick all night and every time I kept getting sick my whole jaw was crunching. It was something I’d never want to go through again.

The jockeys’ title had gone but I was just relieved to still be alive.

From that [Ayr] fall, I think I’ve suffered with mental health issues

I’ve never admitted having a drug in my life but when I had an accident at Haydock and my face swelled up all the inside of my jaw was cut to shreds.

I was in a lot of pain and a friend told me “put some cocaine in your gums, you won’t feel a thing”. I said “no, I would never do that” but I did and never felt any pain.

When I got back riding I never took it [cocaine] but when the Ayr accident happened the first thing that came in head was “self-medicate”.

I think I went about a month after the accident when I had to check myself into rehab. I was on drugs and drink. I suffered mentally, probably to the point I didn’t want to come back riding because it was so bad.

It was very difficult getting back. The first two or three weeks, going around Wolverhampton, I was closing my eyes in some circumstances.

I don’t think my bottle had gone – I was sort of just re-living the accident. Flashbacks and stuff like that. Over the years I’ve gone through that and I’ve had therapy for it to ty and block it out.

It was still very raw: I came back four months after the accident. It was a very short space of time. I didn’t have any platform; just got straight back into it.

I pushed myself to get back but, when I look back, I should have taken a year off. The injury was so horrific. Four months with that amount of metal work? I don’t think my body was healed and neither was my mental state.

But if you have a lot of time out of racing new people jump into your boots.

I’d gone into rehab (after Ayr) and spent 18 months sober but I couldn’t maintain it with the weight, the travelling, the pressures of the job, re-living the accident. I could be cantering to post and I’d get flashbacks.

Alcohol had become part of my life. It did help get me through day to day. I became alcohol-dependent.

I kept it quiet and a lot of people didn’t know. I stopped going out and socialising. People wouldn’t think I was having a drink, but I was having a drink at home.

Not only am I taking chances on the racetrack with injury and stuff like that, you are slowly killing yourself.

I always maintained that I was innocent. I never denied passing on any information but it wasn’t for any gain. It was just a normal thing. Everybody always asked.

I was deemed guilty because I had that association with another jockey but also because I was alcohol-dependent and vulnerable.

But this [the inquiry] happened in 2006 and these were for [information regarding] horses in 2001 or 2002 and I wasn’t alcohol-dependent at that time.

At the time I was [also] fighting for access with my daughter through the courts. I had so much going on in my life at the time.

Even though I got the year ban I looked it as a positive, not a negative. I’d had a hell of a lot go on in my life in a short space of time in my career. But it became a negative because I didn’t do positive things. I was a bit out of control.

For instance, I was out in York one evening with a few jockeys and we all came out of a nightclub and were walking along the bridge.

They said “Who would jump in for £100?” and they were joking, and I said I’d jump in for nothing.

I stripped down to my boxer shorts at 3am on Ouse Bridge. I looked down and thought “There’s no way I’m going to jump down there – it’s the middle of winter”.

The police turned up and said “Come down, sir”. Then one of them went to grab me and my reaction was to jump. Halfway down, before I hit the water, I thought “Bloody hell, what have I done”. It was alcohol fuelled.

I came back into shore and the police were waiting. Everyone was filming and shouting. As I was coming in, I splashed the police and jumped back in again.

It was just stupidity.

That year I was out I experienced different kind of drugs. I was out with other jockeys and there were drugs taken.

There was one particular night, halfway through that suspension, when I witnessed another jockey overdose on drugs. How he’s still alive today is beyond me.

Ever since that night, after what I’d seen... never again. I packed it in.

When you see someone fitting on the ground so bad that their tongue is hanging out, drooling, with eyes red in the back of their head you just think “never again”.

He’s still alive, but I don’t know what he’s doing nowadays. I hope that he is clean because you won’t get many chances.

I’d love to have gone through my career and not used alcohol to block certain things out of my life.

I suppose my own self-belief was that I’ll stop it one day when I get a big job and prove I’m an even better jockey than I am. That opportunity never came along. I knew I would have been and could have been better – it was my own sort of arrogance.

The PJA have been brilliant to me in the last five years.

They did pay for some of the therapy I’ve had and I’ve had another little stint in rehab this year, which wasn’t documented.

I knew that the opportunities I had had dried up; I’d lost the ride on Librisa Breeze. I couldn’t see another good horse coming along.

It’s been my life for 23 years and I didn’t want to let go but when it’s affecting your family life and kids you have to say enough is enough.

Lily’s 7 and Joe is 4. It’s been tough on them, the last three or four years. You have to look out for their best interests, as well as my own health.

I remember Streams Of Gold was entered in the Lincoln and I had sat on him in a piece of work for Sir Michael.

I was having breakfast with him. I would never normally ask for a ride but I knew he’d win. He was very well handicapped and was a Group horse going into a handicap.

So I asked him: “Michael, I’d love to ride Streams Of Gold”. He looked at me with a smile and said “If you don’t ask, you don’t get”. They were the words I got from him and he told me I could have the ride.

You’ve still got to ride them with confidence; drop them in and ride them to come home and finish first past the post. He went and won and that was it. I was in demand that year.

It was one of the big highlights of my career.

I’d ridden Magical Romance to win a nursery at Leicester when Jimmy [Fortune], who was stable jockey, was unable to ride her that day.

When she got declared for the Group One it was obvious Jimmy was going to ride her but unfortunately the day before he had a fall in the parade ring at Newmarket and hurt himself.

I was lucky and privileged to get the call to ride her. She was an outsider, a 40-1 chance. Did anyone think she would win on the day? I don’t think so.

Down in the dip I was giving it everything, it got very tight. She was a tough filly. As soon as she hit the rising ground she dug deep for me.

Those big winners can break the ice and open doors but they are so hard to get. It took me another 14 years to win at that level.

With the north and the south there was a bit of a divide.

Down south jockeys have always been a bit more polished, neater and tidier. Up north you tend to find that they do ride a little bit deeper and stronger.

Back then, 20 years ago, the horses would not have been as classy up north as what they were down south.

Racing has changed, it’s different now. The class of horse is pretty much the same as all over the country.

I was young and hungry. When I look back, it was a great achievement. I was 10 winners behind Neil [Callan] with about five or six week left but I had a big advantage as I was doing lighter weights.

Naturally, I was a good horseman and would ride a lot of difficult horses out from when I started. You’ve got to listen and want to learn – even now I want to learn and progress with horses. No two days are ever the same with them and it’s the same with race-riding.

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