HIS day job is spent pinging horses over fences.
Now Thomas Willmott will switch his career to FUNERALS while racing is off.
The conditional jockey is attached to Lucinda Russell’s yard but with the sport on lockdown, has decided to fall back on his other occupation.
Willmott’s father is an undertaker in Dorset so he’s grown up around the industry, and his long-term plan is to go down that path once he’s finished riding.
But for now he’ll step up his hours working for family friends at Thomas Brown and Sons in Melrose during the coronavirus crisis to make ends meet.
And admits that unlike so many of his weighing room colleagues – all of them freelances – he’s lucky to have an alternative to fall back on. Willmott revealed: “My dad lives down in Dorset and is a funeral director, so that’s what I’m going to do when I stop riding.
“With the way things are at the moment, I am going to go and work for a company in the Borders to keep me ticking over.
“I work with my dad when I’m down there at his and when I’m up here I help out at Thomas Brown and Sons, who are close family friends.
“I just do everything you can think it might entail. One day I might be washing cars, then visiting families the next and going out to the funerals.
“Obviously you have to do the removal of someone once they have died as well.
“I grew up around it because my dad has always done it, so it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for me.
“It’s what I’ll go into once the racing is finished, but the riding came along and that’s what I wanted to focus on for the time being.
“Lucinda has been really good, she told me to go and work if that’s what I want to do.
“So I’m very lucky to have something to fall back on, because other people are not in that position.
“A lot of the boys in the weighing room will be really struggling because of the racing being off.”
Russell has her jockeys employed as part of the stable staff rather than jobbing around looking for rides.
They are free to ride elsewhere when she doesn’t need them, but get a steady wage from her for their six-day week at Arlary.
Willmott admits that has left them in a safer position than a lot of their racetrack colleagues, plenty of which will have to find new careers while the hiatus lasts.
And with maintaining a low bodyweight such a key factor in a jockey’s life, he fears some could even be lost to the sport once it ends. He said: “We are lucky at Lucinda’s because we get a wage for going in to ride out because we’re almost full-time.
“So we get a basic wage from her and that keeps us ticking over.
“But other lads who don’t have jobs like we do will really struggle.
“It could be the end for people because it’s a scary time and folk will have to look at other things right now.
“If we are off for three months or longer how many people will be able to come straight back to it?
“If someone puts on a bit of weight doing another job, will they be able to get back down again and will they be disheartened with the whole thing by the time racing is back?
“It could end the careers of some people.”
UK-based trainers have been furious with the British Horseracing Authority for cancelling racing after just one day behind closed doors at Kelso last Monday.
Their Irish counterparts have continued, even though their country is in an even more stringent lockdown than here.
Willmott admits he can’t get his head around it, but hopes a solution is found soon so the industry can recover. He said: “The big question everyone has been asking is why we can’t race while Ireland are still going ahead?
“Over there the bookies and the pubs are closed, but they are still racing.
“Over here, we haven’t gone that far yet but still the racing went off. It’s difficult to make sense of that.
“It’s difficult for Lucinda at the moment, we had 70 horses in training last week to around fifteen being ridden out now.
“So there has been a massive drop off as far as that is concerned.
“She has been positive, she’s said that nobody will be losing their jobs.
“We usually do a huge amount of work around the yard in the summer where we do improvements and really tidy the place up.
“So, basically, we have started that a month early this year.
“That gives the staff something to do while we don’t have many horses in.
“On the racing front, there is obviously nothing to do at the moment apart from keep the horses ticking over while we wait for it coming back.
“Losing the start of Perth’s season is dreadful for us because most of our summer horses have their year planned around it.
“Last year I had ten rides over the three days in April, but this year there will be nothing.
“It’s a nightmare for the racecourses as well, it’s a can of worms for everyone.”
