BURKE TO THE MANOR BORN

Nick Townsend speaks to Jonathan Burke who was bred to be a top jockey and is quickly making his mark

- Nick Townsend

Full daylight is already on the dimmer switch on an already dank Monday when Jonathan Burke mounts a maiden six-year-old Haston Clermont, his one ride of the day in the last at Lingfield. It is a class 5 three mile handicap chase, with winning prize money of less than £3,500.

It is, by any estimation, a stark contrast to two days previously at Sandown when he had participated in the rearranged Grade 1 Fighting Fifth Hurdle, finishing second on Love Envoi, trained by Harry Fry, for whom he is a retained rider, and would have partnered the same stable's in-form Boothill in the Grade 1 Tingle Creek Chase, but for the eight-year-old being withdrawn because of the underfoot conditions.

It's all part of the vicissitudes of the job for the majority of jump jockeys: one day Grade 1 prospecting for gold at Sandown; on another day panning for a decidedly more modest prize at Lingfield.

In the event, the well-supported partnership, trained by Noel Williams, proceeds to claim victory in the latter. The following day, he registers another winner at Wincanton, this time in the concluding bumper, aboard Anthony Honeyball's Crest Of Fortune, on the three-year-old's debut.

Yet there is one certainty: the approach of this talented horseman - in the past fortnight has ridden for no fewer than nine trainers, as well as Fry to his craft is the same whatever the venue, whatever the class or quality of race - an unrelenting pursuit of rides, and most importantly, of winners.

It was a life that Burke declared was for him as early as his childhood when his Grade 1-winning father Liam trained around 100 horses at his Cork base. It was a life that no number of bone-fracturing falls would have ever convinced him to think otherwise and convert to a rather more sedentary career.