From Swaziland to Royal Ascot: Sean Levey on how he survived 'bucking bronco' trauma to become a track trailblazer

Soon Sean Levey will pay homage to the equine Declan Rice and discuss breaking down barriers but, first, his face is frozen by the reminder of a bucking bronco.

Levey is one of the best Flat jockeys in the business. He heads to Royal Ascot this week with a fine book of rides, none better than the outstanding miler Rosallion, who he will partner in Tuesday’s St James’s Palace Stakes.

There have been many stops this father-of-two has made on the road to the top, including Croydon and Tipperary, but it all began in Swaziland (now Eswatini), the little country in southern Africa where acclaimed actor Richard E Grant was also born.

‘We get around, you know?’ Levey says, proudly. ‘There’s a few of us about. He went to a school called Waterford, a posh place up in the mountains. Me? I went to a state school, where you got hidings every day! No, I’m joking. I’ve only happy memories, it was a beautiful place to grow up.’

Not so happy, though, are the memories of his first encounter with a horse 33 years ago when his father, Mick, gave him a leg up and almost caused a calamity.

‘Dad was a really good horseman,’ he says. ‘He’d break his own horses in; he owned a racetrack and used to race and train his string but that fell apart after a sponsorship deal he had collapsed.

‘So he was left with all these horses. He decided to re-train them as showjumpers as it was a big market. Anyway, this morning, we’re walking back home after work — “Jump on,” he says. I was so small, I couldn’t get my legs over the saddle — I couldn’t have been more than three.

‘Next thing, the horse goes tonto. I grabbed on to his mane and basically clung on for dear life. I said there and then I’d never go near another horse.’

Thankfully — and eventually — he reconsidered, tagging along with a friend who had been having riding lessons. He was a competitive showjumper and tried his hand riding in cross-country races but it was only after a summer spent in Ireland as a teenager, when he tried pony racing, he realised his vocation.

‘Once I got the bug, there was no looking back,’ he says. ‘Initially I hated the idea of racing. Now? I can’t imagine why I didn’t get into it immediately.’

Levey became the first black jockey to win an English Classic when Billesdon Brook sprang a 66-1 shock in the 2018 1000 Guineas and, at a time when racing is trying to appeal to a wider demographic, his profile is significant.

‘This is a hugely welcoming sport and once it grips you, there’s nothing like it,’ he says. ‘I never set out to be an inspiration but if people are inspired by what I do, so be it. I’ve always tried to make good with the chances I’ve had.’

Levey spent the early phase of his career as an apprentice for Aidan O’Brien at Ballydoyle — ‘an unbelievable education,’ he says — but it is with Richard Hannon that a platform arrived for his talents.

It was on the Hannon-trained Heredia, in 2022, that he finally managed to get a Royal Ascot winner after so many years of trying but the tantalising possibility of what is an offer this week through Rosallion, on whom Levey landed last month’s Irish 2000 Guineas, has him excited like never before.

Notable Speech and Metropolitan, the winners of the English and French 2000 Guineas, will be formidable opponents, as is another French raider, Darlinghurst. This is racing of the highest calibre.

‘It’s un-believe-able,’ Levey says, breaking the word down slowly for emphasis. ‘The challenge of getting a horse to run at Royal Ascot, never mind win, is off the scale. If a trainer is looking around his yard for a horse to go to that meeting, he hasn’t got one. Those Ascot horses shine like stars.’

This is something Rosallion has always done and it invites Levey, who supports Arsenal because he arrived in Croydon at a time when ‘Crystal Palace were ****!’, to be at his most colourful to explain what sets him apart.

‘He’s a gentleman, so mature — he’d be like Declan Rice,’ Levey says. ‘The athlete who is very professional, he’d never be on the news for doing anything stupid. His character is A1, he turns up every time. He eats, sleeps, does his work.

‘I still can’t believe we didn’t win the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket. It was like he (Notable Speech) had found a shortcut on a computer game and hit a magic star! But the re-match is there and what a race it’s going to be. That’s what racing is all about, isn’t it?’ 

Sean Levey will be at a raceday near you. To find your nearest fixture visit: greatbritishracing.com