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Dominic was born on 10 Nov 1968 at Rintelm, Westphalia. He was married on 16 May 2009 at St Mabyn to Claire Nute.
‘Certainly one of my favourite riders, Dominic rides with the verve and style of a true professional. No longer a serving officer in the army, he is now a project manager for an international computer company. He began his race-riding career comparatively late on in life at the age of 22, but he has won some memorable races, including the Grand Military Cup, and his fierce determination to win is second to none.’
Point to Point & Hunter Chase magazine, June 2001
Dominic Alers Hankey was three years old in 1972 when his father, so memorable to those of us who knew him, was mortally wounded on a Londonderry street by an IRA sniper. He, his brother and his widowed mother quit the soldier’s gypsy life, settled in Somerset, and his lifelong affair with hunting began.
His mother Christine, now Christine Heath, became a familiar figure in the hunting field riding side-saddle and was recently seen jumping a hedge on her 70th birthday ‘ a future thruster’s mum if ever there was one.
‘My first memories of hunting were on Fridays, in the school holidays,’ Dominic remembers. ‘Mum would say ‘I’m going hunting’, and my brother and I would be given sandwiches and put in the terrier van, in the care of Norman Herrod, later to be a joint-master. That’s how my hunting started. We were too young to ride to hounds, but we saw and learnt a lot. Often it would be half seven or later when we were dropped back home, usually via a pub. Hunting was what we did as a family.’
‘When I did start riding to hounds I was very lucky. I had a brilliant pony that could follow legendary field master Dick Brake across the Taunton Vale. In those days, for me, hunting was all about speed, jumping fences and the thrill of it. I didn’t have a clue about hounds. But it was terrific fun. It was something I knew that I wanted to do for ever.’
Sadly, Dick is no longer with us to tell us how Dominic rode as a boy, but Tessa Jackson, a master of the Cattistock for 12 seasons, remembers him well as a young man: ‘Dom came to every vale day he could. He was always at the front jumping everything and anything and usually giving a hoop and a holloa on safely reaching the other side. He was an exceptionally good and brave rider and I dont think I saw him on the floor in all my seasons there.’
Bollockings and Bruises
Army service introduced Dominic to the other love of his life. The Royal Hussars sent him to work for the famously plain-spoken trainer Tim Forster. There ‘I had more bollockings than I’ve had at any other stage in my life, fell off horse after horse. But I loved it so much I bought my own horse’, he recalls.
Work in point-to-point trainer Richard Barber’s Dorset yard followed and Dominic was taken up as a jockey by trainers Mike Trickey and Caroline Keevil. He was to notch up 101 wins, including two Military Gold Cups, and he tackled Aintree three times. His proudest racing memory was riding in the Czech Pardubice, ‘crashing gloriously at the Taxis, the biggest fence I ever tried to jump, about twice the size of Beechers.’
‘Now I’ve given up racing, hunting is the sport I enjoy most. I hunt as much as I can, with the Taunton Vale, but occasionally I’ll have a day with other hunts.’
Richard Mitford-Slade, senior Taunton Vale master and long-standing hunting chum. Takes up the tale: ‘We were in the South Dorset’s famous Tuesday country. The field had become a bit dispersed, and the country getting bigger, when we came to a massive boundary hedge, which was, on the face of it, unjumpable. But Dom shouted, ‘Let’s have it.’ We all set sail and, remarkably, survived, horses unscathed, and hounds in view.’
‘I look after my horse as if he were my son’
‘I’m wary of the label ‘thruster’, if that means I go round looking for things to jump,’ Dominic cautions. ‘These days my mind is always on the hounds and I am very mindful of my horse. I’ve got one now and look after him as if he were my son. I’m only interested in getting him home sound, having been with hounds all day. If I have to jump something the size of a house to do that, I will, but I won’t jump anything for the sake of it.’
To add my own pennyworth, Dominic kindly lent me a horse called Ollie. He only had to see a fence to demand to be the other side of it, with hounds; he told me a lot about his master.
Horse & Hound, 6 January 2011, by David Edelsten