Nico de Boinville: ‘I used to bunk off public school to watch the racing’

When Nico de Boinville was at public boarding school in Berkshire, while Best Mate was winning three Gold Cups in succession at the Cheltenham Festival between 2002 and 2004, he bunked off classes in an early sign of his obsession with horse racing. “I definitely snuck out of a couple of lessons to watch Best Mate,” he says. “It was then that Cheltenham came on my radar, because before that I was massively into Flat racing.”

The 32-year-old jockey, who is English racing’s best hope of challenging the domination of the annual Irish invasion at Cheltenham this coming week, laughs when asked if he would have been joined by any other rebellious public schoolboys during his illicit Festival-watching. “Not at all. No one else was fussed. It was all football and only I followed the racing.”

On Wednesday, De Boinville rides the imperious Shishkin in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, which promises to be the most compelling race of the week. Shishkin’s victory over Energumene, from the mighty Irish yard of Willie Mullins, lit up Ascot in January and the swift resumption of their rivalry is an enticing prospect. De Boinville is on Constitution Hill in the opening race of the Festival on Tuesday, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, and he again has an outstanding horse on which to try to stem the tide of Irish winners.

But it’s intriguing to hear about De Boinville’s unlikely journey into racing and how, with his privileged and very different background to most of his peers, he has established himself as a leading English jockey. His mother and father, who was an insurance broker, pushed him towards further education and De Boinville accepted a place to study politics and history at Newcastle University. Those interests remain and help