Batchelor on board for Queen’s Cup
Mattie Batchelor, a British steeplechase jockey currently enjoying the best season of his career, will join Jimmy McCarthy as the featured foreign jockeys for the 15th Queen’s Cup Steeplechase on Saturday, April 24. The six-race program at Brooklandwood Racecourse in Mineral Springs, N.C., near Charlotte, will feature the $50,000 Queen’s Cup MPC ‘Chase.
Batchelor, 31, will travel to the U.S. in place of Brian Harding, who recently broke an arm in a fall. A native of the south of England, Batchelor is an accomplished steeplechase jockey and an irrepressible member of the National Hunt jockeys’ rooms. His biggest career win was aboard King Harald in the 2005 Jewson Novice ‘Chase.
He has ridden the Grand National course at Aintree and finished third last year on front-runner Cossack Dancer in the Topham ‘Chase. After the race, he described Aintree’s best-known fence, The Chair, as looking “like a block of flats” as he approached it. This season, he rode Carruthers to a fourth-place finish in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and a second in the Totesport Bowl Chase at Aintree.
For a steeplechase jockey, Batchelor is a lightweight—he can tack 127.5 pounds—and rides on the flat in Jersey during the summers.
