This article first appeared in the August 2021 digital edition of Equestrian Life. To see what’s in the current issue, click here.
Toni Collette stars in ‘Dream Horse’, a 2020 feel-good feature film based on a true story.
© BFA/Alamy Stock Photo
It takes a village to win a horse race
By Suzy Jarratt
When Welsh barmaid Jan Vokes decided to breed a racehorse, her only experience had been with whippets and pigeons. Her foal would not only be a winner, but the subject of a documentary and now a feature film starring Toni Collette.
Before this feel-good feature began filming in Wales, the real story had been told in a documentary that screened at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the amazing tale of Janet Vokes, who organised a community syndicate in their depressed mining village to finance a thoroughbred foal. Titled Dark Horse: The Incredible story of Dream Alliance, it won the festival’s World Cinema Documentary category for 2015.
Jan and husband Brian had bought an injured mare, Rewbell, for a bargain £350 and bred her to a retired American thoroughbred racehorse for a fee of £3000. Their chestnut foal was born on an old slagheap in South Wales in 2001. They named him Dream Alliance and he ended up winning the Welsh Grand National.
In 2020, Dream Horse, starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis, also premiered at Sundance. The overall response was positive, indicating international box-office success, but Covid-19 was to sideline general distribution until recently…
Read the full article in the August 2021 issue of Equestrian Life magazine here.
