Tyson Fury leaves Luke Morris 'starstruck' as ex-heavyweight champ rolls into Doncaster with Netflix in tow

Two years ago the King and Queen visited; last year the prime minister came. It was quite a challenge for Doncaster to come up with someone bigger in 2025, but they managed it.

Tyson Fury is bigger than most folk, to be fair. Six feet nine and 20-odd stone of former heavyweight world champion.

He brought a bigger entourage than Charles and Camilla, or Sir Keir Starmer, too. Although, to be fair, they were on private visits to the St Leger – and numbers were not easy to gauge as security staff are paid to blend into the background.

The prime minster Keir Starmer and his wife Lady Victoria Starmer walk into the parade ring before the St Leger in 2024 Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

Fury, however, was here on business; not boxing business but show business, filming the second series of his fly-on-the-wall documentary At Home With The Furys.

The Netflix crew had come to record the great man and his family watching Big Gypsy King, the three-year-old filly he shares with his manager Spencer Brown, run in the 7f handicap.

Which is why the camera team who began work on the current production in Monaco a couple of months ago found themselves in the slightly less exclusive surroundings of the Town Moor parade ring at 11am on a Saturday, being instructed carefully by the clerk of the course as to where not to stand so as not to get hurt – it's not only a boxer who can land a big blow when riled.

They have a lot invested in the project and anyone who was among the 10,000-odd racegoers gathered here for 'Rock At The Races' day can tell you why. This man is box office – even now he has swapped the boxing ring for the parade ring.

Crowds thronged the pre-parade as Fury met filly, the air echoing to cries of "Come on Tyson" and "We love you Tyson".

Tyson Fury and his wife ParisCredit: Louise Pollard

He was glad-handed by hundreds of 'I-won't-wash-this-hand-for-a-week' racegoers on his ring walk to the paddock, where he met trainer Oliver Cole and jockey Luke Morris and the adulation multiplied tenfold.

No request for a selfie was turned down, although Fury was aware that this was as much Big Gypsy King's day as his and he was full of hope on this return to Doncaster, his wife's home town and scarcely a mile away from where he and Paris married in 2008.

“She’s in great shape" he said of the three-year-old. "Oliver’s done a very good job with her. We’re here in Paris’s home town so we want to win today. It’s great to be back in Doncaster."

Fury also has a couple of jumpers with Jimmy Moffatt and explaining his growing interest he said: “I’ve been around horses most of my life. At the latter end of my career I started getting into a few and here we are today."

Which can only be good news for racing. As Morris said: "It's great for racing that such a high-profile athlete shows an interest."

It says something when a man who has ridden more than 2,000 winners can be overawed and he admitted: "I did amateur boxing when I was nine or ten and a friend of his seemed to know that, so we had a good chat about that. He's an absolute showman and I'm a huge fan — to see him in the weighing room, I was quite starstruck."

Perhaps Big Gypsy King was too. She finished last of 11 on this first race in front of her famous owner.

Big Gypsy King: failed to land a blow in the 7f handicapCredit: Edward Whitaker

But there is no returning to the day job for Fury, even if there are those who believe his latest retirement from boxing may prove temporary rather than permanent.

When will he be back in the ring? “Never," he said. "I’m too old. Look at my beard, all grey. Boxing’s a young man’s game.”

Could he instead have a full string of racehorses? “Maybe. Who knows?”

That is a thought to conjure with. Who better to take the fight to the government over the racing tax and affordability checks?

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