The ten-time champion jockey in France sits down in a Deauville restaurant and starts speaking. For 45 minutes, Christophe Soumillon barely draws breath as he outlines in almost evangelical terms his plans to teach children to ride.
His dream, of course, in establishing the Soumillon International Pony Academy, is to teach one or more of them to ride as well as he does. On Monday, the Société d'aménagement foncier et d'établissement rural (SAFER), a Normandy organisation charged with preserving green spaces, announced that Soumillon had beaten seven other applicants in his bid to launch his project on former stud land at Saint-Arnoult. The 49-hectare farm, based ten minutes from Deauville, will become a combination of racing academy, holiday camp, and pony breeding centre run by Soumillon and his wife Sophie, with help from a number of his colleagues from the weighing-room. Children can benefit from its facilities from the age of eight.
“We'll be like a tennis club where the kids come nearly every week,” he says. “And we will have summer camps in July and August when we will organise pony races on the track. It will be three, four, five years for it to be all finished. But for next year we hope we're going to have a training track ready. We already have some stables there.”
The reference to tennis is not accidental, and Soumillon is not making a standing start either as the jockey has already been training some young riders, both at his home farm and at Maisons-Laffitte. In August he organised the first in a series of pony races at Clairefontaine which culminates this weekend.
“The idea for the academy came because my oldest son loves tennis, and last May he went to the Rafa Nadal Academy. He came back with stars in his eyes, and I said, 'Why should we not do that for our sport?'”
The big question though, when the 42-year-old Soumillon is still some way off thinking of retiring from his own highly successful riding career, is why he would become involved with such a major undertaking.
“Because when I was young, I always dreamed of doing big things in life,” replies the Belgian-born rider. “I come from a place where I didn't have the chance to have a pony. My parents didn't have the money, we didn't have a nice space to do it. So I was always dreaming of that. So for me, this was to be able to do things that I was dreaming of when I was a kid.
“We already have 20 ponies ready for racing and training and also more than ten ponies for breeding. We just wait now to complete the process to buy the place and start to build a track, build new stables. The idea is there, and now we have found the place. So it was a great relief when we heard the news on Monday.”
Soumillon's support of young riders in pony races stretches back several years but he had not realised the difficulty in finding suitable ponies until he was on the hunt for one for his youngest son.
“Even for somebody who knows racing and has a lot of people around him and some money, it's not easy to find one,” he says. “It's very difficult to open up the sport to the outside if the facilities are not there, and most important are the ponies. In the beginning I was just trying to find a pony for my son, but then I thought I would take a few more.
“I have my own farm, but just fields, and we can go in the forest, but there is not a proper training track. So at Maisons-Laffitte I started to bring the kids on to the training track. France Galop helped us, giving us some time on the tracks after the racehorses finished training, so that was really cool.”
Having selected an equine team, including a number of Welsh ponies bought in the UK, Soumillon set about ensuring they were suitable for children to ride by schooling them himself. He repeatedly returns to the subject of safety, both in ensuring that the academy provides suitable helmets and body protectors for the children, and also in establishing that their mounts are “well in the head”.
“That took me months to prepare all the ponies,” he says. “I also have some good riders who are 13 to 15 years old, so they are able to ride young ponies, and for them it's good because they are behind me. Sometimes I give some advice, sometimes I don't have to say anything, they just watch how I do it.”
He continues, “For me it started to become something crazy because I never thought I would stay in the business after my racing career because I love to travel, I love sports, I love many things. So I was like 'when I stop, I stop'. And now I am enjoying so much going to the stables in the morning, training the ponies, feeding them, teaching them also how to be good every day. We do a lot of jumping, we go on the beach, in the forest. I don't want to have nervous ponies.”
Through August on the days he wasn't racing, Soumillon had groups of children riding, some with little experience, who by the end of the month were ready to ride in races. It is no rush job, however, and it is far from just about racing.
For us it's a new experience but probably the most amazing thing I could imagine.
“I want to teach to the kids the respect of the animal first, how to become a real horseman, show them how a horse thinks sometimes. And I want them to stay with the ponies in the box for a while, not like when you go to the go-kart track, you arrive, you put the helmet on, start the engine, drive. Because if you just go on the track and canter every day, the ponies become too hot. I have been trying to find a place where I can really be at home, a safe place with plastic fences everywhere. I looked at some properties around here and then this one came like a miracle.”
Soumillon plans to employ dressage and classic riders along with some of his colleagues with racing experience.
“Kids want to start to ride fast and short, and actually when they have to ride a young pony that doesn't know what to do, they don't have the right balance,” he says. “So for me it's very important to start with good basics, good hands, good position.”
He continues, “The racing industry needs this. A lot of trainers complain that they have no morning workers. There are few good apprentices at the moment. Kids don't want to stay in this business because it's a hard job.
“If you want to stay in this difficult world that is horse racing, you have to start early. And when you know everything early, and you think that you are good at it, you are passionate. And when you have the passion of a sport, even if it's difficult, it's no problem because you know that you have to train hard to go even higher. And that's in any sport. If you see Tiger Woods, or all these great champions, they start the sport very early. You can't become a star if you start at 16 years old. It's too late.”
Soumillon has enlisted the help of retired top jockey Dominique Boeuf along with Hervé Gallorini in the team of five teachers currently helping 12 young riders.
“For us it's a new experience but probably the most amazing thing I could imagine,” he says. “When I was a kid 30 years ago, I would have loved to see a champion jockey from anywhere in the world doing this and to have had the chance to go there.”
To date, the tuition has been free, but as the academy is established at the new farm, and with the costs involved in buying, breeding and keeping ponies, charges will eventually be brought in, though Soumillon plans to make spaces available for some children still to have free lessons.
“Sometimes it will be the government that helps us, sometimes big owners will sponsor us. That's what's happening now with the pony races. When we created the race days this year, every big owner in France that I asked said yes to sponsoring a race,” he says.
Soumillon has also taken encouragement from two similar projects run from the British Racing School in Newmarket, one aimed at schooling children in pony racing and the other to introduce children from less privileged backgrounds, or with particular issues such as autism, to the delights of being around horses and ponies.
He adds, “They learn so much and it's great therapy for some kids with problems. When they ride ponies, they can release their pressure and be happier in their heads. That's why I'm going to go to Newmarket in November to see what they're doing over there.”
I have done nearly everything that I wanted in my job, but it's not the
year when I won most races when I was the most happy and free.
One senses that his involvement with helping young riders to fulfil their dreams is helping him too in releasing some of the pressure that must be felt by any jockey, whatever their rank. Soumillon's own illustrious career has been speckled by controversy, most recently when he elbowed Rossa Ryan off his mount during last year's Prix Thomas Bryon. He was banned for 60 days and lost his retainer to ride for the Aga Khan.
“For a few parts of my career I wasn't happy when I was going to races,” he admits. “Too much work, or when you lose the ride on a horse, when the trainers or owners change, I was not able to stay quiet. That's how I am. But I can share my experience with kids. You can see all the big races, the best races when I won. But before that there was also a grey time, black times. It's like my problem last year. I'm going to speak about it. For sure I'm not proud, but you have to explain to them what happens. Sometimes you're not happy, and you react, overreact.”
He continues, “So we need to explain to them, be careful. It's a wonderful job, but mentally it's very tough. Because you need to lose weight. You need to work every day. You're going to have to drive a lot, and then go to some dinner to see owners and trainers, but you cannot eat too much. And you're going to earn money very fast, but you need to understand that the money can also ruin it.
“I have done nearly everything that I wanted in my job, but it's not the year when I won most races when I was the most happy and free. And I have a chance today to do something. I go to see the ponies, I ride them, then I go to the races. For me it's a double pleasure because I have to look after the ponies and look after the kids. And when they come back after the gallops, and you see a big smile on their face, their sparkling eyes, they're like, 'Whoa. We get it. That's what we want'.”
Beyond the pony racing academy, and perhaps beyond his own competitive days in the saddle, Soumillon also has plans to work with retired racehorses and France's Au-Dela Des Pistes movement in retraining them for other disciplines. Indeed, one of his quirkiest former partners, the Aga Khan's Vazirabad, is now one of the poster boys in this sphere.
“I want to give back to racing, and also to the horses, what they have given me,” he says. “They give me so much. So for me it's a natural thing. I'm not forced to do it.”
In the meantime, though, he is adamant that race-riding remains his first love and priority.
“I'm not retiring. A few people think I am, a few people hope. But no, I'm still very fit, and I want to do my job,” he says. “I'm a competitor. I still want to win. I know how to ride. I'm feeling well. And most important for me is that I'm very happy.”
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