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Upcoming Point To Points and Hunterchase's
- Thread starter Gullible
- Start date
Sam Lee a very popular Point to Point jockey passed away on Friday and will be greatly missed by all involved in Pointing.
I read the following piece written by Brett Glover on a National Hunt Forum on Facebook and found it very thoughtful and touching. RIP SAM
I'm deeply saddened to hear about the tragic passing of Sam Lee, and I find myself sitting with that in a way that is difficult to fully articulate — because there is something about a life ended at 27 years old that does not simply register as news.
It lands differently. It settles somewhere deeper, in that quiet part of you that knows, without needing to be told, that something has gone very wrong in the world.
Twenty-seven years old.
There is so much life that is supposed to happen. So many chapters left unwritten.
So many mornings not yet woken to, so many races not yet ridden, so many conversations not yet had with people who loved him and wanted nothing more than more time in his company. To look at a photograph of Sam — that wide, unguarded smile, the kind that comes not from performance but from genuine, uncontained joy — is to see a young man who had every reason to believe the best of his life was still ahead of him.
That is what makes this so hard to hold.
Horse racing is a sport that demands everything from the people who give their lives to it.
It asks for early mornings in the cold and the dark, for physical discipline that borders on punishment, for courage that must be renewed every single time you climb into the saddle knowing the risks that exist the moment the stalls open or the tape rises.
Jockeys carry the weight of their own ambitions alongside the hopes of trainers, owners, stable staff, and fans — and they carry all of it quietly, professionally, because that is simply what the sport requires of them. What the public sees is the colour and the spectacle: the silks, the horses, the thunder of hooves down the straight, the elation of a win, the stoicism of a loss.
What the public rarely sees is the human being underneath all of that — the one who goes home after a fall and has to decide, again, whether to get back up. The one who watches their weight with an obsessiveness born of necessity. The one who, behind the professionalism and the bravado, is navigating the same complicated interior life as the rest of us, with the added pressure of a sport that never really lets you rest.
I did not know Sam personally.
I want to be honest about that, because grief for someone you did not know can sometimes feel presumptuous — as though you are borrowing something that belongs to others, was never yours in the first place. But I think the truth is that news like this travels past the boundaries of personal acquaintance for a reason.
It reaches people who never met him because it speaks to something universal, something that lives in all of us who follow this sport:
The knowledge that behind every name, every result on a racecard, every silhouette passing the winning post, there is a full and complicated and irreplaceable human life. And when that life is lost, something is taken from the world that cannot be replaced or replicated or compensated for in any way.
People move through their days carrying things that the people around them cannot see. This is one of the quiet tragedies of being human — that we are remarkably good at concealing our struggles, not always out of deception, but because we learn very early that the world tends to reward composure. We learn to say we are fine when we are not. We learn to smile through things. We learn that asking for help can feel like an admission of weakness in environments that prize toughness and resilience above almost everything else. In sport especially, that culture runs deep. Strength is visible. Vulnerability is private. And so people carry what they carry, alone, for longer than they should have to.
I don't know what Sam was carrying. I don't think any of us can know that fully.
But his passing is a reminder — a painful, necessary, unwelcome reminder — that the people in our lives who seem the most capable, the most cheerful, the most together, are not immune to darkness. That a smile can be completely genuine and still not tell the whole story. That the person riding high on a winner one afternoon can be struggling in ways that are invisible to everyone watching from the stands.
Life is precious in a way that becomes devastatingly clear only when it is taken from us too soon. We understand this, theoretically, in the abstract — we know that our time here is finite, that the people we love will not always be here, that every ordinary day we move through unremarkably is, in fact, something to be grateful for.
But knowing it and feeling it are different things entirely. Grief is the teacher that makes the lesson impossible to ignore, even temporarily.
And in those moments, when the news of a life ended far too early finds you, the right response is not to look away or to retreat quickly back into the comfortable numbness of routine. The right response is to let it mean something. To let it change, even slightly, the way you move through the days that follow.
Check in on people. Not in the performative, fleeting way — not the single message that asks if someone is okay and accepts the word "fine" as a satisfying answer. Check in with patience and with presence. Offer your time without attaching conditions to it.
Remember that the people most likely to insist they are fine are sometimes the ones who most need someone to stay a little longer, ask a little more gently, and make it clear that whatever they are carrying, they do not have to carry it alone.
My heart goes out to Sam's family, who are living through a loss that no words from anyone on the outside can adequately address.
To his friends, who are searching for ways to hold the shape of him now that he is gone.
To the racing community — the trainers, jockeys, stable staff, connections, and fans — who had the privilege and pleasure of working with him, who understand better than most what it means to lose one of their own, and who carry the particular grief of a world that expects them to keep going because the horses still need riding and the races still need running, even when the heart wants nothing more than to stop and be still.
Rest peacefully, Sam...
You deserved so much more time
I read the following piece written by Brett Glover on a National Hunt Forum on Facebook and found it very thoughtful and touching. RIP SAM
I'm deeply saddened to hear about the tragic passing of Sam Lee, and I find myself sitting with that in a way that is difficult to fully articulate — because there is something about a life ended at 27 years old that does not simply register as news.
It lands differently. It settles somewhere deeper, in that quiet part of you that knows, without needing to be told, that something has gone very wrong in the world.
Twenty-seven years old.
There is so much life that is supposed to happen. So many chapters left unwritten.
So many mornings not yet woken to, so many races not yet ridden, so many conversations not yet had with people who loved him and wanted nothing more than more time in his company. To look at a photograph of Sam — that wide, unguarded smile, the kind that comes not from performance but from genuine, uncontained joy — is to see a young man who had every reason to believe the best of his life was still ahead of him.
That is what makes this so hard to hold.
Horse racing is a sport that demands everything from the people who give their lives to it.
It asks for early mornings in the cold and the dark, for physical discipline that borders on punishment, for courage that must be renewed every single time you climb into the saddle knowing the risks that exist the moment the stalls open or the tape rises.
Jockeys carry the weight of their own ambitions alongside the hopes of trainers, owners, stable staff, and fans — and they carry all of it quietly, professionally, because that is simply what the sport requires of them. What the public sees is the colour and the spectacle: the silks, the horses, the thunder of hooves down the straight, the elation of a win, the stoicism of a loss.
What the public rarely sees is the human being underneath all of that — the one who goes home after a fall and has to decide, again, whether to get back up. The one who watches their weight with an obsessiveness born of necessity. The one who, behind the professionalism and the bravado, is navigating the same complicated interior life as the rest of us, with the added pressure of a sport that never really lets you rest.
I did not know Sam personally.
I want to be honest about that, because grief for someone you did not know can sometimes feel presumptuous — as though you are borrowing something that belongs to others, was never yours in the first place. But I think the truth is that news like this travels past the boundaries of personal acquaintance for a reason.
It reaches people who never met him because it speaks to something universal, something that lives in all of us who follow this sport:
The knowledge that behind every name, every result on a racecard, every silhouette passing the winning post, there is a full and complicated and irreplaceable human life. And when that life is lost, something is taken from the world that cannot be replaced or replicated or compensated for in any way.
People move through their days carrying things that the people around them cannot see. This is one of the quiet tragedies of being human — that we are remarkably good at concealing our struggles, not always out of deception, but because we learn very early that the world tends to reward composure. We learn to say we are fine when we are not. We learn to smile through things. We learn that asking for help can feel like an admission of weakness in environments that prize toughness and resilience above almost everything else. In sport especially, that culture runs deep. Strength is visible. Vulnerability is private. And so people carry what they carry, alone, for longer than they should have to.
I don't know what Sam was carrying. I don't think any of us can know that fully.
But his passing is a reminder — a painful, necessary, unwelcome reminder — that the people in our lives who seem the most capable, the most cheerful, the most together, are not immune to darkness. That a smile can be completely genuine and still not tell the whole story. That the person riding high on a winner one afternoon can be struggling in ways that are invisible to everyone watching from the stands.
Life is precious in a way that becomes devastatingly clear only when it is taken from us too soon. We understand this, theoretically, in the abstract — we know that our time here is finite, that the people we love will not always be here, that every ordinary day we move through unremarkably is, in fact, something to be grateful for.
But knowing it and feeling it are different things entirely. Grief is the teacher that makes the lesson impossible to ignore, even temporarily.
And in those moments, when the news of a life ended far too early finds you, the right response is not to look away or to retreat quickly back into the comfortable numbness of routine. The right response is to let it mean something. To let it change, even slightly, the way you move through the days that follow.
Check in on people. Not in the performative, fleeting way — not the single message that asks if someone is okay and accepts the word "fine" as a satisfying answer. Check in with patience and with presence. Offer your time without attaching conditions to it.
Remember that the people most likely to insist they are fine are sometimes the ones who most need someone to stay a little longer, ask a little more gently, and make it clear that whatever they are carrying, they do not have to carry it alone.
My heart goes out to Sam's family, who are living through a loss that no words from anyone on the outside can adequately address.
To his friends, who are searching for ways to hold the shape of him now that he is gone.
To the racing community — the trainers, jockeys, stable staff, connections, and fans — who had the privilege and pleasure of working with him, who understand better than most what it means to lose one of their own, and who carry the particular grief of a world that expects them to keep going because the horses still need riding and the races still need running, even when the heart wants nothing more than to stop and be still.
Rest peacefully, Sam...
You deserved so much more time
jinnyj
Senior Jockey
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2004
- Messages
- 5,966
Yes it was a beautiful and poignant piece.
I am just so angry that despite my calling for more to be in place, I was ignored. I asked for posters to be in every weighing room and around the lorry parks. I asked for a helpline to be displayed in a prominent position on the website.
I asked after Hannah Roache was hung out to dry - I asked again when Tommie Jakes died. Apparently a deep buried helpline number on the website is sufficient - oh and Racing Welfare were supposed to be attending lots of points - not seen anything yet and I have been to about 12 so far this season.
I am just so angry that despite my calling for more to be in place, I was ignored. I asked for posters to be in every weighing room and around the lorry parks. I asked for a helpline to be displayed in a prominent position on the website.
I asked after Hannah Roache was hung out to dry - I asked again when Tommie Jakes died. Apparently a deep buried helpline number on the website is sufficient - oh and Racing Welfare were supposed to be attending lots of points - not seen anything yet and I have been to about 12 so far this season.
