Nigel’s fight for the small man
GRANGE HILL Farm is situated halfway between the hamlets of Guiting Power and Naunton in the rolling Cotswold countryside, where the characteristic honey-coloured native limestone lends a warm hue to an already idyllic rural canvas.
It is from these rolling hills that Nigel Twiston-Davies sends out a string of horses which, over the years, has been nothing short of remarkable in both its collective consistency and ability.
Two Grand National winners, two Scottish National winners, two Welsh National winners, as well as prizes such as Scottish and Welsh Champion Hurdles and a total of six Cheltenham Festival winners, have all emerged from this gilded place.
Regular race fans will recall newspaper pictures of Twiston-Davies parading his Grand National winners Earth Summit (1998) and Bindaree (2002) outside his local, The Hollow Bottom in Guiting Power. Some might have thought that unusual, but not around here. Not ten miles from Prestbury Park itself, this is racing heartland and Twiston-Davies is centrally located in it.
Grange Hill Farm was once just that – a farm. Before he took out a full training licence back in 1989, Twiston-Davies farmed 400 acres, but a lack of money – he ran an operation based around arable farming and suckler cows – persuaded him to take out a public licence in ‘89 (he had trained under permit since 1981). He sold three-quarters of his holding and kept 100 acres on which to run the racing operation.
“The reason I sold up was that the economic climate at the time was no good and the borrowings were too great and servicing the debt was too much to cope with. But with 100 acres left we had plenty of land to establish a proper training centre,” he says.
“What we started was a small family business and we realised that if we did most of the work ourselves, we could make it pay. Certainly you could not live off 100 acres around here if you were farming it because the land isn’t good enough. Training under permit had been going well for me and when we did the sums we realised we could make it pay if I took out a public licence and thankfully it has snowballed to the point where we have 75 horses in the yard now. That’s a number we’re very happy with.”
It was not always so and back in the early part of the new millennium Twiston-Davies ran into a fallow patch which almost caused him to turn his back on the sport.
Aintree, of course, has been very kind to Twiston-Davies and his two Grand National wins make him the only active trainer to have achieved such a feat. Famously, it was Bindaree’s win there in 2002 that provoked a change of heart on his behalf because he was ready to throw his hat at the training game after a series of under-whelming seasons. However, that victory changed everything, renewing his enthusiasm and while he admits his record at Aintree helps sell him to potential owners, he reckons the old line ‘that you’re only as good as your last winner’ is the most pertinent thing when it comes to attracting new people to the yard.
“Past successes get forgotten very quickly, but I am lucky to have had owners to have been very loyal to the yard and have stuck with us over a long period of time. You cannot really survive in this game unless you have that sort of backing,” he muses.
“It can be very difficult to be consistent especially as we only really deal with inexpensive horses here. We don’t have any £100,000 horses here so it is hard work when you only really have cheap ones. I source most of mine from Ireland and we look for bargains. I go to the sales myself and we have a number of people who keep a look-out for us, but the bottom line is that we have our thresholds and if it costs more than that to buy a horse, then we just have to walk away.
“It is very difficult to find good young horses at lower prices and I have not worked out the percentage rate of dross as against good ones, but we have been lucky down the years. Look at the likes of Battlecry, who is one of our better ones right now. When we bought him he cost only€ e1,200 which equated to eight hundred quid or thereabouts, so we were very lucky with him. You’ve got to keep on your toes looking for them.
“Yes, it’s frustrating when you haven’t got big dosh behind you because it is difficult to keep firing in the winners. You look at other trainers and they have got horses which have not even run yet because they were expensive purchases and are kept for the really big days. Every one of ours has run a few times at least because they can’t be down in their stables collecting fees for nothing.
“I can only buy what people – my owners – will pay and in the current climate it is difficult to find people who are going to pay anything. Right now we are alright and we are maintaining the numbers we need, but who knows what time will bring. We will still need a good Cheltenham and Aintree to keep us on the map and to make sure people still come to us.”
One such owner has been businessman Raymond Mould, Twiston-Davies’ next door neighbour and the man to whom he sold most of his farm. Mould owned Bindaree and has been a long time supporter of the yard and amongst his current inmates at Grange Hill Farm are Knowhere and Tramantano, both of whom are entered at the Festival. It is his support – and that of people like him – that keep Twiston-Davies’ yard ticking over.
The focus right now though is on Cheltenham. They key is focus rather than nerves.
“There is no doubt this is an exciting time of the year, and while you do have worries, there is no point getting too uptight. We have an awful lot of entries and it is difficult to juggle everything and to place the horses in the races that they have the best chance of winning. It is not an exact science, you understand, but we try our best.
“Being from around here means that Cheltenham is obviously very important – it’s our local track, it is my favourite track and to have a winner there any years is very crucial in the overall picture.”
Twiston-Davies smiles when it is put to him that the public perception of him is that he is a bristly character and one not afraid to speak his mind when the occasion requires him to do so. “I’m no Charlie Mann,” he laughs, “but yes, I’m certainly not one who will allow himself be walked over and if I see an injustice I will speak my mind. But I’m not one to go looking for trouble either.”
One of the main assets in his yard is Irish jockey Paddy Brennan, who has ridden a lot of winners for Grange Hill Farm since his unexpected departure from Howard Johnson’s yard.
“Paddy actually approached me when he was leaving Howard’s and he knew there was a vacancy here because Carl Llewellyn was retiring and it has gone on from there. We have a very good relationship and he’s a good bloke and we get on well. No one could work harder for us and we work hard for him.”
The trainer says he was as mystified as anyone else when Brennan was allowed leave Johnson’s. “Because he's such a good jockey. It is up to them what went wrong, but I’d have to say he done nothing wrong for us. He definitely does the business for us and we’re delighted to have him. He comes in twice a week and he is a great help to us.”
Brennan partnered Imperial Commander to win the valuable Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham earlier in the season and Twiston-Davies says that the horse is probably one of his better chances in today’s Ryanair Chase, along with Pettifour, who will run in the Ladbroke World Hurdle. But it is ‘the Commander’ for whom he has highest hopes.
“Imperial Commander is a great horse. He’s was sent to me, so I can’t claim any credit for finding him or anything. Kevin Ross found him and he was four or five when I got him and with a few months he won his first bumper – he won it by miles. He’d already won a Point-to-Point in Ireland but right from the start we really liked him and he’s proved us right. I wasn’t surprised when he won the Paddy Power – we all had him backed – but I very much hope he is progressive enough to go on and win more races and I suppose tomorrow will prove whether or not that is the case.
“We don’t have any good things going in the handicaps this year, but they are in there and they’ve got chances. It might be unrealistic for us to beat the big guns in the Gold Cups and the Ryanairs, but we have our hopes.”
