British Champion Jenny Litston

Author Carl Evans (first published on GB Pointing)

A sense of sadness will be felt, particularly in the Wessex Area, by news that Jenny Litston has died at the age of 60.

Litston won the national women riders’ title in 1988 and was widely regarded at that time as one of the best amateurs in the West Country.

Good horses that she rode included Mister Bosun, who was bought and trained by her father, Bill Gooden, as a schoolmaster, and who retained a zest for racing over many years. At the age of 15 he provided Litston with four winners, a quarter of the 16 she rode to win the national title after beating Amanda Harwood by a single victory.

In that same 1988 season Litston won the Coronation Cup on the Richard Nicholls-trained Dawn Street, who recorded the fastest of four divisions of that Classic race. During that period the Coronation Cup was habitually run in divisions – 139 horses were entered for that one race in the year that Litston was champion – and she won further divisions of the race on Dawn Street the following year and on her father’s My Mellow Man in 1990. Other multiple winners she rode at that time included the Nicholls-trained Gathabawn.

She went on to become first-choice rider on ladies’ open-race horses in Richard Barber’s yard, but five years after her title success, and in one of the saddest incidents to befall a top rider in the sport, Litston suffered severe injuries in a fall while riding for the stable at Larkhill.

Polly Curling, who went on to become Barber’s no.1 rider and national women’s champion on three occasions, said: “I knew Jenny well, and rode for her father, Bill, on a few occasions when Jenny wasn’t available. She was a good horsewoman, fiercely competitive and horses jumped well for her. If she had the horse she was good enough, and she wouldn’t have ridden for Richard [Barber] if he didn’t think she was up to the job.

“One year a crowd of us who were all involved in the sport, went down to Portugal for a holiday in a couple of villas. Jenny was certainly a party girl and we had the best of fun, probably drinking far too much. Someone came up with the idea of placing a lilo on the edge of the pool, then running onto it to see who could surf the furthest. Jenny won that, too.”

Following her career-ending fall Litston spent most of the next 32 years aided by live-in carers backed up by assistance she received from the Injured Jockeys’ Fund. She and her husband, Philip, divorced some years after the fall and after he too had been badly injured in a vehicle accident, although they remained close and he visited her regularly. She moved to a care home for the last few years of her life.

In 2009, 16 years after her fall, Oaksey House, the Lambourn-based rehabilitation and fitness centre opened and Litston benefited from the treatment she received there.

Clare Hazell, one-time chief executive at the Point-to-Point Authority and who went on to manage Oaksey House until earlier this year, said: “When Jenny attended residential rehabilitation sessions she always wanted to join in the activity days – I believe she even had a go on a zip wire. She had difficulties communicating, but always kept in touch and would write emails to her rehabilitation officers asking when she could come back. People enjoyed working with her.

“Despite her disabilities she had an amazing joy for life and lit up the room.”