04 November 2010 McKim Hangs Up Her Boots
by Carolyn Tanner
Tash has had more than her fair share of injuries over the years, and anybody seeing her on crutches at the end of last season will assume that it was one fall too many. Not a bit of it - Tash had snapped her anterior cruciate ligament, which she had torn three years previously, while paintballing.... She is due to have an operation next year, and meanwhile has to wear a metal brace on the knee.
She also has a much better reason for retiring, as she and her partner Liam are expecting their first child in March. The baby will have an early introduction to Pointing, as one of the couple's first purchases has been an all-terrain pushchair!
Tash's initial winner, at Mollington in 1998, was Tompet, who she still has at home, and in 2003 she partnered Moonshine Bill to win an 18-runner flat race at Pontefract for Peter Hiatt, but she considers her most satisfying success to be at Garthorpe on the enigmatic Sabre King. "He was an old monkey," she recalls. "He sometimes didn't want to start, and he put me, and some other riders, in hospital a few times, so it was an achievement to get him to win. And riding winners for Jeff Tredwell was always special."
