Catching up with Jonathan Burke ahead of the upcoming spring festivals
With the Cheltenham Festival and a busy spring schedule fast approaching, we caught up with CopyBet ambassador and leading jockey Johnny Burke to find out how his preparations are going.
It's been good. January is always a tricky month in the horse racing world in the UK because of the weather and this year's been no different with so much frost and rain. But I had a really good weekend two weeks ago with a treble at Market Raison, so that's definitely been the highlight of the month for me.
Yeah for sure. Life doesn't really change as much for jockeys like myself given that we're halfway through the season. Lots of people might look to January 1st as the time to introduce new year resolutions and changes but for me I'm still in the middle of it all really, so it's more about keeping focus on the number of winners and potential rides and identifying horses that are good enough for the spring festivals.
Yeah it's all about trying to find horses that can go up to handicap and seeing if we can get the win that's needed in order for them to do so. I'm riding a horse called Serious Challenge in the two mile hurdle at Newbury next week and if things were to go well for him there, he could be lined up for the Cheltenham Festival.
End of January / start of February you're typically looking for those horses that are capable of making the step up to competing in the big spring festivals. There are five or six horses off the top of my head right now that are being aimed at Cheltenham but they'll need to win their next races in order to book their spots.
Yeah I suppose you do and mainly because you're so keen to be there. It's probably not until the turn of the year that you start to think 'Right, so what could I realistically ride at Cheltenham?' but essentially it's like splitting the season into two halves. You get the Autumn out of the way and then you start thinking about Cheltenham and Aintree and you want to keep your name in the ring for as many rides as possible.
It's always at the forefront of your mind and obviously the press speculation and coverage starts to ramp up and everyone in the industry becomes fixated on it. It's hard not to let it consume your thoughts but it's exciting for sure.
