Horse, Dog & Sports Walter Swinburn Laid To Rest

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The Church of Our Lady Immaculate & St Etheldreda in Newmarket was packed beyond capacity at noon on Thursday for a Requiem Mass to celebrate the life of the three-time Derby-winning jockey Walter Swinburn, who passed away on Dec. 12 at the age of 55.

The service was conducted by Fr Simon Blakesley, who assured mourners that, although we cannot know whether ‘The Choirboy’ is singing in the heavenly choir, he is now with the Lord. He advised that the best tribute that Swinburn’s family and friends could give would be to live their lives as he would have wished them to do, with the enthusiasm and zest for life which he himself had shown.

Michael Haggas, the jockey’s agent from 1989 until 1995, gave a moving eulogy in honour of his friend. As well as outlining his meteoric rise to the top as a jockey, he recalled Swinburn’s sporting prowess as a schoolboy rugby player, in the hunting field in Galway and on the Cresta Run during his winter holidays, as well as his proudest sporting moment, as detailed in the score-book of the Kensington Oval: ‘Sir Garfield Sobers, bowled W. R. Swinburn’.

Haggas recalled that the confidence and swagger which had been Swinburn’s trademark as a rider had not been his style when out of the saddle, but that at all times he had faced life’s ups and downs with courage and with dignity. He observed that “there was not a bad bone in his body – although there were plenty of naughty ones!”

A son of dual Irish champion jockey Wally Swinburn, against whom he rode several times in the early years of his career, Walter Swinburn Jr was a titan of the saddle. Fittingly, the congregation included many of the other race-riding greats of the era including Geoff Lewis, Joe Mercer, Willie Carson, Mick Kinane, Ray Cochrane, Johnny Murtagh, Richard and Michael Hills, Billy Newnes, Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer.

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