When Venetia Williams embellished the romance of the Grand National with a 100-1 winner in April, the script should have run something like this - attractive, single woman, training in chocolate-box Herefordshire, confronts a stampede of rich men bringing valuable new horses and offers of marriage. A grown-up sequel to National Velvet.
The reality is prosaic and deflating. Williams has had eight horses removed, including Kayf Aramis, one of her two winners on a landmark Cheltenham Festival day in March. Her 100-box yard has empty boxes “for the first time in years”. And, at the age of 49, she remains perhaps more solitary than she would like to be.
You will not find Williams crying over this - not publicly, anyway. She has cultivated a showtime face for racing business, self-contained and cautious even now she is “not as shy as I once was”. As to the matter of living alone, she is pragmatic but wistful. “It’s not necessarily out of choice but that’s how it is,” she says.
Beneath the mask, though, lies a whirlpool of feelings. Training consumes her. The TV in her sitting room “has not been watched for months” as, instead, she spends evenings on entries and paperwork. Some may regard this as unfulfilling but Williams would disagree. “And I won’t be doing it for ever,” she adds.
By her own admission, though, she has a vulnerable side. “I’m no more resilient than I’ve ever been. I still take the knocks the same way I always have, and that’s badly.” This latest perversity, seeing key horses depart when her star has never been brighter, is especially hard to absorb. Hurt and bewilderment figure strongly alongside a cool determination.
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An utterly admirable career is not suddenly imperilled. The Williams training operation, on tranquil land running down to the banks of the Wye, is far too well-run for that. She prides herself on the consistency that has seen her train between 55 and 89 winners every season in the past decade, never out of the top ten in the championship.
Even the slow start to this season - no winner for three months until a cluster in the past week - is customary for one who “will not play Russian roulette with horses’ legs on fast ground”. The pace is quickening now, with fancied runners at Cheltenham this weekend, recent purchases from Australia and Germany about to appear and Mon Mome, the National hero, being readied for the Hennessy in a fortnight. Exciting times.
But for all that, there is detectable melancholy when she dissects recent events. “Maybe it was an unfortunate year to win the National, when nobody had much money to spend,” she ventured. “I hoped it might open new doors but recent history suggested it wouldn’t. Losing good horses, though, was very, very upsetting. Bizarre, really - to this day, I don’t know for sure why it happened.”
Williams is sitting in the kitchen of the house she inherited from her grandmother, along with a cider press and a lot of derelict farm buildings. An Aston Martin, her unashamed indulgence of a craving for speed, sits in the drive and I can only imagine the vengeful treatment it might have had after one of her biggest owners, Paul Beck, rang to take all his horses away.
“I’d only come back from holiday the day before. I react badly to things like that, I admit. People may say it’s just competition - that owners might find in someone else what they’re not getting from me and that it’s not for me to complain. But I’m a natural worrier and I got down about it.”
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Beck sent some of the horses to George Baker, ironically a good friend of Williams. Among those he moved to the aspirant Welsh yard of Tim Vaughan is Atouchbetweenacara. Only in April, he had won a grade two chase at Cheltenham. It is seven years since Williams’s last grade one winner and she had hopes that this might be the horse to end the wait.
I asked Williams if any part of the job made her feel inadequate and the answer was revealing. “It’s having to go out and get new owners. I really don’t know how to go about it - I’m in awe of the schmoozing abilities that certain trainers have and I probably need to learn.
“People always talk in those old clich?s about a woman in a man’s world and I’ve steadfastly refused to acknowledge there is any handicap. But I now admit that this particular area - marketing and PR, if you like - is something I struggle with. I’m sure it would be easier if I had a talkative man with me.”
It is an abiding mystery that Williams has never married. Perhaps her obvious success and prosperity scares off suitors? Or maybe, like many other private ambitions, she is saving it until she is done with training? “I’m not too bothered about the marriage bit,” she said. “But it would certainly be nice to have a man around some of the time...maybe someone with a completely different life.”
Her own life hardly allows for traditional wedded duties. She is as meticulous in her methods as she is immaculate in her dress sense and, while she worries herself into many a sleepless night, she maintains an unshakeably circumspect outlook.
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This was taken to the ultimate as she stood on the County Stand roof at Aintree watching Mon Mome’s surreal progress into National legend.
“As they turned for home, the commentator said there were 12 still in with a chance and I thought ‘damn, there’s only prize money down to sixth and we’ll probably finish ninth.’
“I almost felt cheated out of the screaming and hollering bit. One minute I was thinking we’d finish out of the money, the next it was all over. When I did shout, I couldn’t hear much else - he was such a complete outsider no one had backed him.”
A party awaited back at Kings Caple that night, and Williams played a full part. She was even seen with a rare glass of champagne or two, along with a constant smile. If subsequent events have brought different expressions and emotions, they have not soured her against the task of remaining racing’s leading lady.
“It’s a career I enjoy enormously. There are so many downs and you’d never be able to weather them if you didn’t enjoy the good times sufficiently. I haven’t done the half-century yet. We’re good to go for a bit longer, for sure.”