WHEN Brendan Powell stopped race-riding, perhaps literally before it killed him, he listened to copious advice that he would be mad to take up training, then did it anyway. Despite a thankless routine of long hours and sleepless nights, he has no cause for regret, yet if he needed reminding what a fickle business he has entered, recent events have done the job graphically.
On January 24, ironically the day scientists had identified as the most depressing of the year, Powell trained his first treble. The combined odds were 23,300-1 and the winners at Fontwell Park included a 100-1 shot and a horse that had not run for three years. Here, surely, was a career in the ascent but, if Powell’s hair could turn any greyer, it would have done so in the subsequent three weeks.
“I haven’t had a winner since and we’ve had a series of horses run desperately for no apparent reason,” he said yesterday. “I’ve never had a day like last Saturday — I ran three lovely horses at Newbury, all owned by great people, and each one was tailed off. I was hoping we’d find they were all full of muck but there’s nothing wrong with them. I hardly slept afterwards and I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
Not, then, the most auspicious start to a landmark week. On Friday, his handsome novice chaser, Big Rob, is due to run at Sandown. The following day, Colonel Frank, the horse that just might propel Powell on to a different level, has a longstanding engagement in the Country Gentleman’s Chase at Wincanton.
“I’d begun to think we should stop for a couple of weeks, try to get to the bottom of what’s wrong. But I had a lot of horses blood-tested on Monday and most have come back fine. Big Rob and Colonel Frank both worked brilliantly this morning, so if the ground is right, we’ll run.”
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Powell, 44, has been training for five years now and his graph is on a steady climb. Last year, apart from enhancing the quality of jump horse in his 50-box yard near Winchester, he produced 25 Flat winners. It is a hands-on operation, in which Powell and his wife, Rachael, appear to do almost everything. Around them, in this half-term week, their children “B. J.” and Jenny, already accomplished riders, frolic contentedly.
His love of the life is engaging and yet, just occasionally, he cannot resist nostalgia for a 20-year riding career that produced almost 700 winners. “It was very hard to give up. I never thought of stopping even during the bad times. It’s probably stupid but I feel I might still be riding now but for that last injury.”
A fall at Newton Abbot damaged Powell’s lungs and ribs, to lasting effect. “My ribcage was deformed. One bit of bone was running along some tissue near the heart. They said if I ever broke it again, it would kill me. But I never thought about that and I did ride for another three months — I just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t push in the second half of a race because I’d lost the capacity of the lungs. Every time I pulled up, I’d nearly be sick.
“I almost got a licence out again last year, to ride Eau de Cologne in a couple of chases. And the fellows who own Colonel Frank have said if I ever want to ride him I should do it. I never lost my bottle and I still feel I can see the strides. I’d give anything to do it but I can’t.”
Instead, Powell pours his considerable energies into his homely but ambitious yard. “I put every penny I had into it. When I came here five years ago, the whole place was derelict. The stables had no doors or proper floors and there was no gallop.” With justified pride, he shows me the woodchip gallop he laid himself, and an eight-fence schooling strip in immaculate shape.
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It was here that he learnt of Colonel Frank’s principal asset. “He’s a great jumper. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be half the horse he is.” Still, first impressions were not promising. “I thought he was an ugly brute. In his box, he’s got all the tendencies of a camel — big, lanky and a funny mouth. But see him walk round the paddock and he’s a completely different animal.”
He has won three successive chases now, on the last occasion beating three Gold Cup hopefuls at Sandown. Powell sees him as an ideal horse for the Betfred Gold Cup but urges caution. “I know he has a following because people keep asking me if he’ll run at Wincanton and saying they’ll come to see him. But I still think he has to prove himself.” Even after a barren few weeks, that can no longer be said of the trainer.