Colin Tizzard is a man at the top of his game, and universally liked. You might hear funny stories about him but you won’t hear bad ones, a rarity in the world of racing. His skill at training racehorses is in the ascendant and with Cue Card entered for the Boxing Day King George VI three-mile chase at Kempton Park, there is an air of expectancy in his West Country stable yard.
Consider that the horse has won more than £1.2m in prize money and will go off favourite for the Boxing Day race.
The yard is located on top of a hill outside the small town of Milborne Port in the Somerset countryside. Tizzard’s yard looks more like an industrial complex than stables where some of the finest horses are trained.
The recent form of Cue Card and of this year’s Cheltenham World Hurdle winner, Thistlecrack, indicate that Tizzard is doing something right. Last month Cue Card won his third Betfair Chase and if he wins on Boxing Day and can take the Gold Cup at Cheltenham in March, he will collect a £1m Jockey Club bonus.
At 7am the lights in the barn shine brightly while stable staff in bookmakers’ livery (the yard is sponsored by Coral) stride about, saddles and bridles under their arms, taking their instructions from the man who has been catapulted from a West Country dairy farmer and bed and breakfast proprietor into a leading exponent of National Hunt racing.
Advertisement
Outside, the rain is coming down and the air is riddled with expletives as Tizzard gently but firmly gives orders as to how he wants each horse ridden. The horses are led out to the yard, mounted and continue their warm-up laps.
Despite the colourful language, Tizzard knows what he is doing. With 85 unruly horses under his tutelage, his owners must think so too. It costs them around £400 a week to have a horse tutored at Venn Farm, Tizzard’s family home. The set-up is a family affair with his son, former jockey Joe, daughter Kim and wife Pauline all playing their part, all partners in the business.
“If the training goes wrong I’ve got the farm to fall back on — just in case
Tizzard looks at horse after horse. He really eyeballs them, searching for signs to tell him how they feel. Looking at the condition of their all-important feet, feeling their legs for heat, tending to the sick, sorry and lame, he’s the same with his dairy cows and his dogs. Most yards breed neurosis but the bulk of horses under his care are calm, confident and content.
Tizzard is the true former stockman, with a particular talent in handling horses. There’s an owner, Kenton Honeybun, who has come to visit. He is a long-time friend of Tizzard. So what’s his secret? “The great thing with Colin is he’s the same with everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lad, an owner or the Queen — he speaks to all in the same way. He is completely natural,” says Honeybun.
Tizzard’s keen interest in a racehorse’s diet is evident. “I’ve got some in this yard we give unlimited food to throughout the day. The average would be about 16lb of food a day,” he says. The art of feeding a racehorse has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. It used to be a bucket of oats, bran, maize and barley in differing quantities. Now it is all compound food developed by equine nutritionists so a bit of the art of training has gone.
Advertisement
It’s no wonder that Tizzard’s horses look so good. The facilities are superb, with all-weather gallops, schooling arenas and a ring so deep in sand that the horses sink 10in when working. They really have to work and come off, having done 10 circuits, dripping with sweat and nearly on their knees. These horses are as hard as mahogany.
Does he ever think about giving up the dairy farming? “No, never would do. Just in case. If the training goes wrong I’ve got the farming to fall back on.” But what of the B&B? After all, here is a man who has won millions of pounds in prize money. “Oh yes, we should have taken the sign down, we have stopped B&B now,” he says with relief.
The big horses — Thistlecrack, Cue Card and this year’s Hennessy Gold Cup winner, Native River — are all set to contest the 2017 Cheltenham Gold Cup and there are predictions that Tizzard will land the one, two, three. I ask him in what order he thinks they might cross the line.
He won’t answer for fear of offending connections. “But, you’re looking at the best racehorse in the country,” he says as Cue Card, all sinewy muscle, revs up and shoots like a firework up gallops steeper than any racetrack; faster and better than those left in his wake — and he’s not even trying.
But let’s wait until Boxing Day is over. The racing game brings nothing if not surprises.
Brennan awaits his Cue
On a fresh morning in the West Country, a phalanx of riders in blue jackets process up a steep hill in pairs, writes Andrew Longmore. At the top they wheel round to head on to the flat, oval, sand gallop to complete their work. Only one rider stands out, the one wearing the bright red jacket. Paddy Brennan was never much of a follower, of fashion or creed. His career has been a tribute to hard work, talent and a gift for overcoming adversity, some of which has been of his own making.
Advertisement
Yet the ever-restless Irishman has created a pretty decent volume of work over 16 seasons and, at the age of 35, he is not done yet. He has ticked off most major jumps races, and last month joined a select club of just over 20 who have ridden 1,000 winners over jumps. “It’s a hell of an achievement,” he says. “I had to work so hard to make myself the rider I wanted to be.”
Colin Tizzard, Cue Card’s trainer, described Brennan’s style as a “bit rural”. He did not know how long Brennan had spent riding Woody, his mechanical horse, in the garage, watching himself in the mirrors on the wall and trying to match that image on the racetrack. Brennan knows he’s not the neatest in a finish, but there are few who can equal him for drive and willpower when a big prize is at stake. A year ago, almost everyone at Kempton had consigned Cue Card and Brennan to defeat as Ruby Walsh and Vautour powered over the last, but Cue Card soon understood that an elemental force was at work in the saddle and responded gallantly to the demands. At the line, the measure of victory was a head and Brennan’s delight was unconfined.
Switch to another moment, two and a half months later, when Cue Card has just begun to make his move coming down the hill to the third fence from home in the Gold Cup. A £1m bonus for winning jumping’s new triple crown — Betfair Chase, King George and Gold Cup — is within touching distance but Cue Card misses his stride and is pitched headlong into the Cotswold turf. Brennan too is flat on the floor, hoping that a hole might open up and swallow him. “After a while, I asked myself, ‘Well, are you going to lie here forever or are you going to get up and do something about it?’” he says. “I got up and between Cheltenham and Aintree I had about 20 winners, my best spell of the season.”
With Cue Card set to defend his crown in the 32Red King George VI on Boxing Day, Brennan is being sustained by his partnership with the country’s leading chaser. Before victory in last year’s Betfair Chase at Haydock, Brennan had gone more than four years without a Grade One winner, testing times for a jockey who has known the heights. Those days are long gone.