UK Horse Racing Tips

Archive for the ‘Trainers / Owners’ Category

Caroline Bailey has, justifiably, garnered a reputation as one of the leading horsewomen in Britain. She is, in fact, the daughter of the late Dick Saunders, who rode Grittar to win the Grand National, as a 48-year-old amateur, in 1982. Indeed, during her own riding career, she had the distinction of becoming the first female jockey to ride a winner at Cheltenham, aboard Ptarmigan who, like Grittar, was bred, owned and trained by the late Frank Gilman in Morcott, Rutland.

Caroline Bailey first took out a full, professional training licence in 2006, but by that stage of her career, had already sent out over 450 point-to-point winners from her yard at Holdenby Farm Lodge in rural Northamptonshire. Her most memorable victory came courtesy of the seven-year-old Castle Mane, who recorded an impressive, 13-length win in the Christie’s Foxhunter Chase Challenge Cup at the Cheltenham Festival in 1999. In fact, she later admitted, ‘At Cheltenham, I’d never been so excited in my life, particularly as we’d had him from the beginning.’ Two years later, in 2001, Bailey saddled the first two home, Gunner Welburn and Secret Bay, in the Martell Fox Hunters’ Chase, over the Grand National fences, at Aintree. Other notable horses to pass through her hands include the profilic Teaplanter, who only cost £1,000 as a yearling, but won 27 races, including three point-to-points, and amassed nearly £54,000 in total prize money.

Since joining the professsional training ranks, Bailey has found high-profile winners harder to come by. However, in February, 2019, she did saddle Crosspark to win the Vertem Eider Handicap Chase at Newcastle; the £50,048 first prize money made a significant contribution towards what is, so far, her best seasonal total, of £227,615, in 2018/19.

Born on May 23, 1955, Oliver Sherwood began his career in racing as pupil assistant trainer to Gavin Pritchard-Gordon in Newmarket in 1974, before becoming assistant trainer to Arthur Moore in Co. Kildare, Ireland, where he first rode as an amateur National Hunt jockey. However, in 1978, Nicky Henderson relinquished his position as assistant trainer to Fred Winter to start training in his own right, so Sherwood took his place at Uplands, the most famous racing stables in Lambourn, Berkshire. He continued riding, with no little success, and became Champion Amateur Jockey in 1979/80; all told, he rode 96 winners under National Hunt Rules but, in 1984, made what he later called the ‘obvious transition’ to training in his own right, at nearby Rhonehurst Stables, where he has been based ever since.

Nowadays, Oliver Sherwood is best known as the trainer of Many Clouds, who won seven high-profile races, including the Hennessy Gold Cup – a race that Sherwood had first won with Arctic Call 24 years earlier – in 2014 and the Grand National in 2015, before suffering a fatal pulmonary

haemorrhage after winning the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham in 2017. However, while he may lack the firepower that he once had at his disposal – his last Grade One winner, for example, was Cenkos in the Sandeman Maghull Novices’ Chase at Aintree in April, 2000 – it is worth remembering that Sherwood has saddled over 1,000 winners. Albeit some years ago, his successes at the Cheltenham Festival include The West Awake in the Sun Alliance Chase and

Rebel Song in the Sun Alliance Novices Hurdle in 1988, Aldino in the Grand Annual Handicap Chase in 1991, Young Pokey in the Arkle Challenge Trophy Chase in 1992 and

Coulton in the Cathcart Challenge Cup Chase in1995.

By his own admission, Charlie Mann is ‘never one for keeping a low profile’ and has frequently courted controversy since first taking out a public training licence in August, 1993, making something of a divisive character in horse racing circles. Mann was a successful National Hunt jockey in the North of England in the late Seventies; so successful, in fact, that he was offered, but turned down, a job with Michael Dickinson when he took over the training licence at Poplar House in Harewood, West Yorkshire from his father, Tony, in 1980. In any event, with just shy of 150 winners to his name, his riding career was effectively brought to an end in 1989, when he suffered a so-called ‘hangman’s fracture’ of his second cervical vertebra during a fall at Warwick.

Nevertheless, in 1995, Mann both trained, and rode, the ten-year-old Its A Snip to win the most challenging steeplechase in Europe, the Velka Pardubicka Steeplechase, in Pardubice, Czech Republic. He enjoyed his most successful season, numerically and financially, in 2008/09, while still at his previous base, Whitcoombe House Stables, Upper Lambourn. He has yet to come anywhere close to either total, 63 winners or £640,960 in prize money, since moving to nearby Neardown Stables in 2012, but has managed to amass at least £124,000 in prize money in every season since, bar 2019/20.

Mann has yet to saddle a winner at the Cheltenham Festival, but came as close as he ever has to doing so in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup Handicap Chase. On that occasion, his nine-year-old Merchants Friend held a 12-length lead jumping the final fence, but weakened dramatically on the uphill climb to the line and was collared in the final stride by Maximize, trained by Martin Pipe. He has, however, recorded two Grade One wins, albeit some years ago; the first came courtesy of Celibate, ridden by Richard Dunwoody, in the BMW Chase at Punchestown in 1999, and the second courtesy of Air Force One, ridden by Noel Fehily, in the Ellier Developments Champion Novice Chase at the same venue in 2008.

Down the years, several men, including the inimitable Donald ‘Ginger’ McCain, trainer of Red Rum and Amberleigh House, and Trevor Hemmings, owner of Hedgehunter, Ballabriggs and Many Clouds, have been known as ‘Mr. Grand National’. However, the first man to lay claim to that title was Fred Rimell who, between 1956 and 1976, saddled four winners of the world famous steeplechase. In so doing, he set a record which, while equalled by McCain in 2004, has never been beaten.

As a trainer, Rimell had few peers, but few that argue that his first Grand National winner, ESB in 1956, was due more to luck than judgement. In a bizarre incident, Devon Loch, with the race at his mercy, inexplicably fly-jumped and slithered to the ground just yards from the winning post, leaving ESB to gallop by and win by 10 lengths. Winning jockey Dave Dick later admitted, ‘Devon Loch had me cold.’

Five years later, in 1961, Rimmel won his second Grand National as a trainer, in more conventional fashion, with Niklaus Silver, who remains one of just three grey horses to have won the Aintree marathon. Ridden by Bobby Beasley, the 10-year-old beat the previous year’s winner, and favourite, Merryman II by 7 lengths.

Win number three, which proved to be the easiest of all, came courtesy of Gay Trip, ridden by Pat Taaffe, in 1970. Having previously run in the King George VI Chase at Kempton and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the 8-year-old outclassed the opposition, winning by 20 lengths. Last, but by mo means least, came the Welsh National winner, Rag Trade who, in 1976, completed a notable double when denying dual winner Red Rum his third win the Grand National, for the second year running.