Lady Buttons and the Yorkshire pub owners dreaming of Cheltenham glory

Is she going to run at the Cheltenham Festival? “Yes,” she replies affirmatively. Is Buttons – there’s no formality at the popular hostelry on the edge of the North York Moors – going to win? “She’ll be doing her best.”

Sivills is wearing a light purple jumper, the colour synonymous with her 10-year-old horse who has already won 15 races, the hearts of racegoers and is the Racehorse Owners Association’s reigning National Hunt mare of the year, a top accolade.

A lively conversation follows about the form and opposition before she’s asked what the horse – known as the ‘Queen of the North’ – means to her. There’s a pause. “I’m not normally lost for words,” says the gregarious Sivills.

And then it dawns on her and her family that the horse they bred is lining up in one of the four elite Grade One races on the opening day of National Hunt racing’s flagship fixture.

This is The Tiger Inn at Easington north of Whitby where Sivills, together with her husband Keith and their sons Gary and Mark, have now shared their love of racing with their regulars for the past four and a half years.

Yet the quiet calm, as afternoon punters quench their thirst, is a world away from Cheltenham where over 60,000 raucous racegoers will watch the Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle today.

The pinnacle of racing, Sivills dare not contemplate how she will react if ‘Buttons’ – trained at Catterick by Phil Kirby and the mount of the cherubic Tommy Dowson – wins.

She’s already famous – or “infamous” as her family put it – for sprinting, full pelt, towards the winning post, deliriously waving her purple and white scarf, if ‘Buttons’ is winning.

It’s become a tradition after she dispensed with her high heels, and produced a nimble turn of foot, when Buttons – in just her fourth start – was an agonising second on Ladies Day at Aintree’s Grand National meeting.

Equally the ever enthusiastic Sivills and her husband are now renowned for watching the races separately – he tries to remain calm and focused while his wife is on edge, almost jumping every obstacle in unison with her horse, because Buttons, and racing, mean that much.

“Nerve-wracking,” says Sivills as the grandmother of five recalls last year’s Cheltenham Festival when Lady Buttons was fourth in the Mares’ Hurdle which is now established as one of the premier championship races of the entire week.

“Coming fourth, and leading the horse back into the famous winner’s enclosure, was brilliant – just something that we never thought would happen to us. I remember going down to the saddling box before the race, a bundle of nerves, looking round and seeing 30 or 40 Buttons scarves in the crowd. And then it hit me.”

Purple was the favourite childhood colour of Sivills – “my bedroom was purple” – before she and her family moved to Scaling Dam to run the former Bunch of Grapes hostelry. “Mum and Dad had the pub – I grew up in it – and that’s when I got into horses,” says Sivills whose racing idols include 1981 Grand National hero and cancer conqueror Bob Champion from nearby Guisborough.

“It was in the middle of the countryside. I had ponies from as early as I can remember. I did Pony Club, eventing...Ponies were my life. My friends had them. We were young and could just go out. I loved going to the local shows and gymkhanas – great freedom.”

Her future husband – one of seven children from nearby Liverton brought up by their single mother – used to go racing. Now the owner of a steel fabrication business in Middlesbrough, in addition to The Tiger Inn, it is just over a decade ago since he went to the bloodstock sales.

“I couldn’t get the day off work – I was working as an administrator for the NHS at the time – and Keith went to the sales at Doncaster,” recalled Sivills, 62. “I said to my boss ‘Keith hasn’t bought anything because he hasn’t rung me’. He then called 20 minutes later and said ‘I’ve bought one and got one free’. He had bought the unraced mare Lady Chapp who was in foal. He had an inkling to put his faith in the mare.”

The result of the £26,000 purchase was a foal born, according to Sivills, with a “beautiful white star on her face” before they had to decide on a name. “A friend of mine said she was like a chocolate button – and that’s how she got her name,” said Sivills who went on to explain how Lady Buttons has the character to match her regal name. “I think she knows she’s good. And special,” says the proud owner with emphasis.

Yet it was only when she was sent into training with Phil Kirby that Buttons started coming into her own by winning two of her first three starts before finishing runner-up at Aintree. Instinctively, he knew patience would pay off when she suffered a bad tendon injury.

And it did – she has now won 15 of her 32 career races, a remarkable record of consistency in a sport where the only certainty is its glorious uncertainty. Stable staff have become lifelong friends, the camaraderie on and off the track infectious and invigorating.

A firm favourite at Wetherby and Doncaster where Buttons excels, she has to be produced at the last possible moment by her jockeys because of a tendency to idle when she hits the front. “She’s a Madam – and she knows it,” jokes Sivills who regales how one of her grandsons texted last week to ask when the horse is running next so his PE teacher can have a bet.

But Buttons has put up career best performances in her two most recent runs. She got up on the line to win a valuable stepelechase at Doncaster last December under Dowson in a three-way finish – a race and ride of the year contender – before landing a Grade Two hurdle at the track.

She’s also treated like royalty – she stands regally, ears pricked, under a heat-producing solarium in her stable to stay in peak physical condition and a decision will be made next month on whether to keep her in training or retire her to stud. Sivills is, understandably, looking forward to the day when a horse called ‘Baby Buttons’ – the name is already reserved – becomes the talk of the pub.

But, in the meantime, Cheltenham dawns. And while making the first four will be an achievement, Jayne Sivills knows Lady Buttons will be cheered all the way by her “purple and white army” at the track and regulars watching the race back at home.

“We’re lucky we have good staff so we can get away to the races,” she adds. “Days like this, it’s a dream come true, I never thought I would own a horse considered good enough to run. You have to pinch yourself.”

And pull another pint for good luck...

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Stiff competition in Mares’ Hurdle

LADY BUTTONS won the first of 15 races at Wetherby in December 2013. She had nearly two years off in 2015-16 with a serious tendon injury.

The mare is trained at Catterick by Phil Kirby and is equally proficient over both hurdles and steeplechase fences.

She will be partnered by jockey Tommy Dowson who has won two races on the horses – regular rider Adam Nicol fractured his back in a fall on Boxing Day. Fourth in last year’s Mares’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, Lady Buttons faces a stiffer task this year after top Irish-trained horses Benie Des Dieux and Honeysuckle were declared for the two and a half mile contest.

The winner of £290,000 of prize money, Lady Buttons was voted the 2019 National Hunt Mare of the Year.