Former footballer Jay Tabb all set for charity ride
Wincanton stages fundraising event on Sunday.
Former Premier League footballer Jay Tabb will experience another kind of sporting thrill when he takes to the saddle for the Fitzdares Racing Welfare Charity Flat Race at Wincanton on Sunday. The 37-year-old enjoyed a 16-year career as a midfielder, working his way through Crystal Palace’s youth academy before undertaking spells at Brentford, Coventry, Reading and Ipswich alongside gaining ten caps for the Republic of Ireland’s under-21 side. Upon retirement Tabb, who was introduced to racing and racehorse ownership by a teammate, learned to ride at the Northern Racing College in Doncaster (now the National Horseracing College) and began working for leading National Hunt trainer Philip Hobbs in 2019. “I got into racing through one of my old teammates who used to, whenever we travelled away for matches, watch racing on TV so I used to watch it with him,” he said.“Then we got involved in a couple of syndicates and we managed to get our own colours and own our own horse. “Whenever we’d go to the yards to watch them train on the gallops I always thought ‘it’d be amazing to try that’. “When the football finished I thought I’d give it a go and go up to the Northern Racing College but before that I’d never had any experience riding horses.” Though both sports require a high level of fitness and discipline, Tabb quickly became aware of how football and riding place different physical demands on the body. “In all sports you can be fit in that discipline but when you go to another sport you find it to be totally different, that’s what I found with riding horses,” he said. “The jockeys on TV make it look easy but it definitely isn’t when you’re on a horse, at first it was hard getting used to being in that position for a while.
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