ANY jockey will tell you that when it comes to the end, they want to go out on their own terms. They want to finish their time in the sport, not have the sport finish them.

Noel Fehily was potentially 40 minutes away from the latter scenario, in a nightmare situation that could have had significantly bigger ramifications.

In January 2019, the Cork native had his appendix taken out and then returned to the saddle after 13 days of recovery. He rode at Huntingdon and then at Cheltenham’s January Saturday meeting before he started to feel unwell again. On Tuesday, he couldn’t get out of bed.

He was back in with the surgeon on Wednesday who told him that sometimes when an appendix is removed, the gut can get stuck in the scar tissue and the kink stops everything going through the system. They stuck a tube up his nose and down into his stomach to drain everything out and said in 24 hours, it should relieve itself.

But Fehily was still in agony the next day. By Friday morning he had signed consent papers for an operation that would have the surgeons literally cut his stomach muscles and literally take his guts out. It would have been horrendously painful and seen him out of action for a significant length of time.

The operation was due to take place 40 minutes after he signed the papers but in that preceding time slot, somehow the kink in his small intestine had begun to loosen itself out and the earlier prognosis had improved.

He felt better and gradually returned to normal over the next week and amazingly, was back in the saddle in February.

But the whole episode got him thinking about retirement on his own terms. He spoke with wife Natasha, his extended family and his agent Chris Broad and he decided then, that if he could ride a winner at the Cheltenham Festival, he was going to announce his decision to retire.

He did ride a winner - Eglantine Du Seuil in the Mares’ Novice Hurdle. Not just any winner but a 50/1 shot for Willie Mullins and perhaps more significantly, for owner Jared Sullivan, who had been a great help to him through his career, the pair most notably teaming up for two King George VI Chases with Silviniaco Conti.

It was the end of one chapter and the start of another.

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Noel Fehily and Dave Crosse, his long time friend and now business partner, have a policy when it comes to selecting their horses for their syndicate business, titled Noel Fehily Racing Syndicates. They both have to like the horse. If one of them loves the horse, but the other is so-so, it’s a negative. That’s the way it has to be, the dual confidence has to be there.

They both loved the mare Love Envoi.

“It was during lockdown times when we bought her,” Fehily recalled on his way back from Lingfield earlier this week. “We went down the day before the sale and we picked her out. She actually failed the vet for her wind but we had checked her out and we were happy to go ahead buying her.

“We probably got her a little cheaper because of her wind. Like, we probably bought her thinking that she might need a wind operation but she had won her bumper (in Wexford for Sean Doyle) and we knew she had a certain level of ability. As it has happened, her wind hasn’t cost her any trouble at all.”

Sent to Harry Fry, Love Envoi won on her first start for her new connections at Leicester and then proceeded to go on a winning spree on heavy ground. She won her next three starts, displaying resolute toughness, already a trademark of her running style even this early in her career.

At Sandown in February, she held off all challengers to win the Grade 2 Jane Seymour Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle and it was then that people started to ask about Cheltenham.

“We were not going to run at Cheltenham unless the ground was soft for her,” Fehily says. “We just felt that was the right to do for her and we’d have been okay to swerve the festival on this occasion. Even when she was declared, we still held that view.

“As it happened, the rain poured on the Wednesday and we just got that bit of luck.”

Maybe some things are meant to be.

Love Envoi hit the front travelling best and once again wasn’t for passing under the drive of Johnny Burke, and three years after Fehily had his last Cheltenham Festival winner as a jockey, he had his first as a syndicate-owner.

“You couldn’t have planned it better, to win that race of all races,” he says. “To come across a mare like that and for her to win all her races, for the ground to come right for her and to even just have a horse good enough to go to Cheltenham. It was massive for us and massive for the whole syndicate.”

Long way

Fehily and Crosse go back a long way. They were a couple of young Irish jockeys trying to make it on a foreign soil when they first met when working for Charlie Mann, soon ending up housemates.

Crosse, from Tipperary, moved over to Britain shortly after Fehily. Within his first three years in Britain, he became champion amateur and rode a Cheltenham Festival winner on Nicky Henderson’s The Bushkeeper in the Kim Muir.

However, his career was blighted with injuries and shortly before he retired he revealed in a Heart of Racing column in this paper that he had to battle diabetes throughout his career, hiding the diagnoses because it would have been “professional suicide.”

Before he retired the 40-year-old had already built up a reputation as a jockey coach and began working in corporate hospitality at 16 racecourses, aiming to provide race-day insight and entertainment for various clients.

It was Crosse that mooted the idea of a syndication project to Fehily a few years ago. Interestingly, it wasn’t a grand plan, it was only meant to be a small project.

“It wasn’t something that we had in the pipeline for ages,” Fehily explained. “We started off with a couple of horses and we never really thought we’d get to the numbers we have now. We just had this idea that it would be a good way of getting people into racing through syndicates but it’s snowballed big time.

“At the end of last season I wanted to have 25 horses to run this season and we got to that number. That’s a good number for us now but I wouldn’t mind growing it a bit more.

“We both feel that there is good demand there. There are a lot of people coming into the game that are buying shares that have never owned a horse before. They are dipping their toe into the water and getting great enjoyment out of it.

“We get a great kick out of that. To bring someone new into the game, that has never owned a horse before, that can get involved and meet everyone else in the syndicate, it’s very rewarding to facilitate that.”

Fehily’s record as a jockey speaks for itself. He managed to claim some of the biggest races in the sport, including Champion Hurdle and Champion Chase victories. He rode 27 Grade 1 winners among 1,353 winners in all and was widely regarded as an excellent judge of pace.

Naturally it can be difficult for any long-term sports person when they have to give up their vocation but the progress of this project has not left him needing to substitute his competitive streak.

“When you’re involved in the sport for so long, you’re never going to just walk away,” Fehily says. “It’s great to be involved in another way and it still gives you the buzz when they run well. Like I said, it’s a different type of satisfaction but it’s still a buzz.

“Half the time, I don’t even know where the owners and trainers bar is. When I was riding I used to be just in and out of the weigh room. It’s obviously different in lots of ways. When you’re watching a race, you’re not in control, it’s a lot more nerve wracking than when you’re riding them.

“But now you’re also in it from the start. When we started out we were trying to sell shares, trying to get people interested in buying into a syndicate but we actually had no horse - that was going to come after we had buy-ins.

“We found out very quickly that you can’t sell something you don’t have, so we had to put our hands in our pockets and go buy the first couple of horses. So there is an element of risk there. We go and source what we like, we buy them and then we try and sell the shares after that.

“We buy horses from everywhere. We’ve bought a good few Irish pointers but also horses who have run in England, in bumpers and from the flat. A trainer might have a horse in their yard where maybe the owner wants to sell and they don’t have a syndicate for it. We get offered horses from all different areas. Wherever we can, we always try to go down and get a feel for them.

“Our model is 10% shares and we find that works well for making people feel connected to the horse. If you had a bigger number, the experience can be a bit more dilute, whereas if you tipped it the other way, to 20% or 30% shares, the costs are higher which can put people off. The 10% shares also works well for getting tickets and access to owners facilities for people on racedays.”

You can see the value of linking up with Fehily and Crosse, who are clearly well connected from their previous careers. They currently have horses in training at 16 different yards, including those of Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, Alan King and Dan Skelton. The ambition also extends to growing in Ireland, where they currently have one horse in training with Willie Mullins, Haxo.

That gives Fehily an owners’ perspective of jumps racing on both sides of the Irish Sea, a comparison which drew plenty of heated debate last week when accounting for competitiveness.

“Yeah, you hear this argument everyday of the week about small fields in England and this and that but like we have and had horses in Ireland we see the other side of it. You’ve got an awful lot of balloting out in Ireland, you don’t always get to run where you want to run.

“When you do run, there could be 20 runners, it’s an awful lot more competitive. Whereas over here, you can have a horse and you can say to the owners, there’s a race there in three weeks time and there’s a fair chance you’re going to run that day, so we can organise for that day.

“There are two sides to the argument. Yes it’s competitive, but from an owner’s point of view, it’s a lot harder to have winners in Ireland, getting your horse to run the day you want to go racing, or just letting people know their horse is going to run in a maiden hurdle in three weeks time.”

End goal

At the end of the day, the end goal is still the same for the Fehily, Crosse and the vast majority; Cheltenham. There is every chance the ever recognisable red, white, blue and yellow silks will be well represented at Prestbury Park next March.

Love Envoi has an obvious target of the Mares’ Hurdle and she solidified her status as a major contender for that race with another tough performance on her comeback at Sandown last Saturday.

Tahmuras, most impressive in the way he finished out a Grade 2 contest at Haydock last month, has got the Grade 1 Tolworth Hurdle on his agenda and the four-year-old Hansard looks a very promising type after he won for Gary Moore last Sunday.

“Every horse we buy, the hope is they’re good enough to run at Cheltenham,” Fehily says. “In my book, Cheltenham is the be all and end all. If we can get a few to go, we’ll be delighted. That’s always the aim at the start. I know a lot of them wouldn’t be good enough to go there but hopefully we’ll have a few that will be.”