8:15am Friday 3rd September 2010
By Tamasyn Guy-Jobson
A RARE sight will greet racegoers across the region when a horse nicknamed Rummy appears on the track this season.
The two-year-old colt is sure to stand out from his rivals because of his unusual colour.
Angrove Rum BaBa is a brown and white racehorse who gets his official colour – bay skewbald tobiano – from his sire, Ricco.
Ricco is from a line of successful US-bred racehorses, including grandsire Nureyev, a famous racehorse in the Seventies, and great-grandsire Northern Dancer, winner of the 1964 Kentucky Derby.
Jockey Paul Pickard, 22, will be riding Rummy in the coming season.
Mr Pickard is the winner of the first Kyne-Wilson scholarship, created by Beverley Racecourse to commemorate the deaths of Jamie Kyne and Jan Wilson.
The teenage jockeys were killed in a house fire in Norton, in September last year.
Mr Pickard is an apprentice for trainer Paul Midgley in Westow, near Malton.
Owner Heather Kitching, 49, said: “No one usually breeds thoroughbreds in this colour because they don’t think you can do it.
“There hasn’t ever been a winning racehorse that’s coloured, but we hope Rummy will be the first.”
The horse will compete in flat races across Yorkshire, and Mr and Mrs Kitching hope to take him to national competitions depending on his performance.
The Kitchings own Angrove Stud near Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, and have been breeding since 2005, but made the decision to specialise in thoroughbreds in recent years.
Mrs Kitching is not only a pioneer of horse breeding, but has been a champion of coloured horses for 30 years, founding the Coloured Horse and Pony Agency (Chaps) and running The Bassano Stud, winning every major championship that was open to coloured horses in the early Nineties.
Mrs Kitching also invented one of the most widely used water carriers – the Warhorse.
Mrs Kitching said: “We’ve got a few more places in the syndicate and it’s a pretty good price.”
To join the syndicate, call 01642-724860.
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