‘The Unlucky Lucky One’: Jacob Pritchard Webb on Life After Serious Injury

[Wandering Eyes]

Five years ago, Jacob Pritchard Webb's career as a jump jockey in France was brought to a close with a fall that changed his life at the age of just 23.

Even while coming to terms with his multiple neck and spinal injuries in hospital in Paris, he was already plotting the next phase of his life and from an early stage had his sights set on putting his equine skills to use by becoming a bloodstock agent.

Pritchard Webb is now well on the way to establishing himself in this arena, building up his contacts and client list through France, England and the Czech Republic, and he recently travelled to Deauville to spend some days shadowing one of the best known names in the business, Anthony Stroud, at the Arqana Breeze-up Sale. 

“I've always enjoyed the Flat, having worked at Sir Mark Prescott's in the past, which was a great education and grounding. He had some great horses then like Marsha, Pallasator and Time Warp. Weight meant that I went jumping and then after the accident it made sense to persist with the National Hunt, especially with that niche of having been in France and speaking French,” he says. 

A chance encounter at the Velka Pardubicka and Czech Derby meeting last year has led to Pritchard Webb buying horses for a Czezh-based owner whose interest spans both codes.

“I met Dr Charvat last year and I am very lucky to have him and his son George as clients,” says the agent. “We started low and bought a store for €2,500 for George, which he loved, and it progressed from there to buying Merano and Pardubice horses and on to the Flat. We bought a Saxon Warrior yearling from Orby Book 2, and then they wanted a 90-rated mile-and-a-half horse because there's a good programme for that type of horse in Czech, so we bought Goodwood Odyssey from David Menuisier.

“I really enjoyed looking at the yearlings and that led to me coming here to shadow Mr Stroud. He was one of the first people, along with Anthony Bromley, to get in touch with me after my accident  and he said to let him know if there was anything I needed. I've rung him up in the past with queries and he saw me on Sky Sports Racing last year for the Haye Jousselin meeting. Amazingly he was watching it and he rang me to tell me I was doing well on TV and I asked him if I could shadow him at a sale.”

He adds, “You want to learn from the best and be looking at the best and someone like Mr Stroud will always be looking at the best. It's been a bit of an eye-opener.”

The oft-used phrase 'confined to a wheelchair' does not strictly apply to Pritchard Webb. His lower-body paralysis does mean that he uses a wheelchair but he has let nothing stand in his way since putting heart and soul into his rehabilitative therapy both in France and later back in England at Lambourn's Oaksey House, a tremendous facility established by the Injured Jockeys Fund (IJF).

Two years after his accident Pritchard Webb completed a 140-mile hand-cycle challenge to raise funds for the IJF, which came to his aid in his hour of need. 

“It's a case of 'have wheels, will travel',” he says of his travels around Europe on the sales circuit. “I'm in this situation because of the accident. It is what it is, and it is great to be out looking at horses and buying horses. But it is hard, and sometimes there is the frustration that the chair kind of limits you in where you can go and get into, but with anything you've just got to keep getting out there and showing your face, and then hopefully getting some orders and some results.”

Pritchard Webb's can-do attitude is a humbling reminder to us all to appreciate what we have rather than don't have, as he himself is doing. 

“I always call myself the unlucky lucky one,” he says. “My injury could have been so much worse. If my neck break had been a fraction worse I wouldn't be doing what I am doing at all. I've got to look at it that way – that I can still get out and look at horses, drive a car, ski, play table tennis, do hand-cycle challenges. 

“For two days it was borderline whether I was even going to be able to do that, so I got off lucky in that regard. Even when you are having a quiet time on the winners front, or you are struggling to buy anything, which everybody goes through; even then on top of the paralysis, you've got to look at it that it could have been a lot worse.”

Following a six-month stay in French hospitals, Pritchard Webb has made good on his promise to pursue a career in bloodstock. From some pinhooking with Jerry McGrath and working the French claiming system with fellow agent Toby Jones, he is giving himself a rounded experience, including being named a representative for the French sales company Auctav. His next move will be from Leicestershire to the Welsh Borders with his family to help his grandfather develop their 140-acre farm where he plans to take boarders and house some pinhooked Flat foals.

“Where I was hospitalised I saw so many people in different situations and made some friends,” he recalls. “I know that unfortunately there were some people there that were probably never even going to leave hospital because they were in such a bad way. I remember one day being the only person in the physio room to put my own shoes on, and then another day I was the only person who couldn't walk. I suppose you have to just keep to your own lane and make your own path and have some fun doing it.”

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