John Ingles highlights Bryony Frost's key winners and achievements in the saddle.
Born in Devon in April 1995, Bryony Frost is the daughter of trainer Jimmy Frost whose own career in the saddle included wins in the Grand National on Little Polveir in 1989 and the Champion Hurdle on Morley Street two years later. After success in the south-west in pony races and then point-to-points, Frost had her first ride under Rules, as an amateur, in February 2013.
Her father supplied most of her rides early in her career, though her first winner under Rules came aboard the Rose Loxton-trained hunter Current Event at Musselburgh in February 2015. The partnership had already been successful in points, and the same horse provided Frost with some notable firsts in the next few months; her first ride at the Cheltenham Festival, her first ride over the Grand National fences (unseated after being hampered), and then her first win at Cheltenham at the track’s hunter chase meeting.
The following spring, Frost’s association with Paul Nicholls got off to a perfect start when her first ride for the stable, on Polisky in a hunter chase at Ascot, was a winning one. A year later, Nicholls fielded two runners in the Foxhunter at Cheltenham, with Frost on 16/1 chance Pacha du Polder getting the better of much shorter-priced stablemate Wonderful Charm, ridden by Katie Walsh, by a neck. Frost’s career developed quickly after that success, particularly once she turned professional in July 2017.
Grade 1 breakthrough
Her first success in the paid ranks came the same month on Black Corton in a novice chase at Worcester. That was to be the first of seven wins for the partnership that season as Black Corton developed into one of the season’s leading novices and provided Frost with her first Grade 1 success when he landed the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, the race in which Lizzie Kelly had become the first female rider to win a Grade 1 over jumps two years earlier on Tea For Two.
Besides Nicholls, Neil King was Frost’s other chief supporter and provided her with her first Grand National ride in 2018. Milansbar finished fifth at Aintree after winning the Classic Chase at Warwick earlier in the season when, in a change of headgear and ridden by Frost for the first time, he made all the running and stormed clear off the home turn.
King also supplied a couple of landmark successes for Frost the following season. She became only the second woman, after Lucy Alexander, to ride out her claim over jumps when recording her 75th career win on Marienstar at Kempton in November 2018 and she then reached a century of winners on the eve of the Cheltenham Festival on Myplaceatmidnight at Plumpton.
Festival milestone
Even more significant, though, was Frost’s victory at Cheltenham days later on Frodon in the Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham. It made her the first woman to ride a Grade 1 winner over jumps at the Festival, 24 hours before Rachael Blackmore won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle on Minella Indo.
Frost has a tremendously willing partner in Frodon, his superb jumping ideally suited to the positive tactics employed on him, and the Ryanair capped a fine season for the pairing which had already landed the Old Roan Chase, Caspian Caviar Gold Cup and Cotswold Chase prior to the Festival. Those were among Frost’s 50 wins in 2018/19, making her champion conditional jockey with her best seasonal total to date.
It wasn’t all plain sailing that season, however, as she had spent nearly three months on the sidelines after a fall at Newton Abbot in the summer left her with internal injuries, and then a fractured collar-bone just days after the Festival kept her out until the final day of the season when she returned to win the Oaksey Chase at Sandown on Black Corton.
Frost’s association with Frodon remains an enduring and successful one, and when they made all to spring a 20/1 surprise in the 2020 King George VI Chase (in which Nicholls also saddled the first two in the betting, Clan des Obeaux and Cyrname), it took her career total to 175, breaking Lucy Alexander’s record for the most wins by a female rider over jumps in Britain. The pair’s latest success, their tenth all told and gained in typically game fashion from the front, came in the Grade 1 Champion Chase at Down Royal in October. Frost registered her latest top-level success when winning the Tingle Creek Chase aboard Greaneteen at Sandown on Saturday.
On December 9, 2021, fellow rider Robbie Dunne was hit with an 18-month ban - three of which are suspended - after an independent disciplinary panel ruled he had bullied and harassed Frost.