Unusual coloured racehorse Angrove Rum BaBa to compete in North Yorkshire races (From York Press)

Unusual coloured racehorse Angrove Rum BaBa to compete in North Yorkshire races

9:26am Friday 3rd September 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(1)

A RARE sight is set to 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, or Rummy as he affectionately is nicknamed, is a brown and white coloured 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 1970s, and great-grandsire Northern Dancer, winner of the 1964 Kentucky Derby.

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 across Yorkshire racecourses in flat races, and Mr and Mrs Kitching hope to take him to national hunt competitions depending on his performance.

The Kitchings own Angrove Stud, based near Great Ayton, 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 1990s.

Mrs Kitching also invented one of the most widely used water carriers in the UK, the Warhorse water carrier, one many horse-owners will be familiar with.

Jockey Paul Pickard, 22, is riding the thoroughbred in the coming season.

Paul is the winner of the first ever Kyne-Wilson Scholarship, created by Beverley Racecourse in 2010 to commemorate the deaths of Jamie Kyne and Jan Wilson.

The teenage jockeys were killed in a house fire in Norton in September 2009.

The scholarship includes help with riding equipment, fitness and other areas that the candidate requests.

Mr Pickard is apprenticed to successful trainer Paul Midgley at Westow, near Malton.

Mrs Kitching said: “We’re got a few more places in the syndicate if people ant to join in. It’s £35 per month for a year which is a pretty good price in my opinion.”