What makes a successful racehorse trainer? Patience and an eye for detail. Man management and a flair for publicity. But the right genes help, too, and there Nick Gifford, the handler of the first-class hurdling prospect Straw Bear, does have an advantage. Son of the former trainer and ex-champion jockey Josh Gifford and of an international show-jumper mother, Nick didn’t so much learn training skills as absorb them through the pores. There was no need, in his case, to seek experience in other stables, although he did show his independence by running his own point-to-point yard for three years.
You soon see why a preparatory career as a jockey wasn’t an option for Nick. When I arrived at Downs House, Findon, and was directed to the box where the boss was working, only a fashionable tangle of long hair under a baseball cap was visible as he ministered to Wee Robbie’s legs. But then 6ft 4ins of beaming trainer was uncoiled. Hunter trials and eventing were more his game, as with his sister Kristina, an international whose trophies stack the shelves in the main house.
The yard itself, blue box doors set in flintstone walls, oozes history. Victorian trainer John Porter, winner of seven Derbies, was head lad at Downs House for ten years. Bob Gore trained two Grand National winners there, Jerry M (whose headstone stands still in the yard) in 1912 and Covertcoat the year after.
Then there was the great Ryan Price, he of the wolfish grin and raking trilby. With Fred Winter and then Josh Gifford as his jockeys, the former commando won a Grand National from Downs House with Kilmore and campaigned top hurdlers like Le Vermontois, Beaver II and the controversial Schweppes Trophy winners, Hill House and Rosyth, one of whose victories temporarily cost Price his licence to train.
In February 1970, Price called in Gifford senior and told him to quit the saddle and take over so he could move to the nearby Soldier’s Field yard and concentrate on Flat horses. Josh began training that April, quitting only at the end of the 2002/3 season after sending out the winners of all the big jumping handicaps like the Hennessy, the Mackeson and the Whitbread. Famously, he took the Grand National with Aldaniti, ridden by Bob Champion.
The first word you associate with Josh Gifford is loyalty. I will never forget hearing him quietly defend his young stable conditional to a raging owner who had several horses in the yard, telling him that if he was going to behave like that then he could take his horses away that day. He could so easily have blamed it all on the rider. Loyalty fortunately works both ways, and young Nick is still sponsored as his father was by Felix Rosenstiel’s Widow and Son. The Emiricos family still has horses in the yard. Indeed 95 per cent of the owners stayed.
But Nick Gifford, who takes advice from his father on buying horses and on giving jockeys instructions, is very much running his own show. He knows what to do with a good horse and is making his own luck.
Having fallen in love with the ex-Flat racer Straw Bear when visiting Sir Mark Prescott’s Newmarket yard and bought him for a rich potential owner, Nick found himself embarrassed when the owner’s accountant said no. But there was a set of silks in the yard for J.P. McManus, who had had a horse with Josh, and Nick persuaded JP to take on the horse instead.
Wise move. It was only by a neck in the Supreme Novices Hurdle at Cheltenham last year that Straw Bear failed to give Nick the Festival winner for which his father had to wait 17 years. Then came good wins at Aintree last season and in Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth this season. Although he disappointed at Kempton on Boxing Day, he should not be discounted for Cheltenham.
Less likely to make the Festival this year is Killaghy Castle, winner of the EBF novices hurdle final and typical of the real chasing types whom Nick has installed. The Topanoora gelding, who has a lovely big head and ears, suffered a nasty overreach at Newbury last time out and is still recovering. The trainer says, ‘I’m not going to rush him. He would need another run. I don’t believe in running novices at the Festival without some experience. Everything happens twice as fast there and you can so easily put them off.’
Also on the way back after a nasty puncture wound to a hind leg is another potential stable star, Sobers, a decent bumper horse who has taken well to hurdling. ‘The great thing is that all three â” Sobers, Straw Bear and Killaghy Castle â” are generous sorts with good temperaments,’ says their trainer. ‘That makes them good patients who heal quicker.’
The yard is full not of exposed animals bought out of sellers but with youngsters bred for the winter game who are being given time to develop. Among the good prospects, says Nick, are Russian Around, a six-year-old by Moscow Society, who has missed most of the last two seasons but who beat Noland at Wincanton in 2005, and Mr Nick, who was third in a Cheltenham bumper. I liked the look of the deep-chested Celtic Moon, a Posidonas gelding.
Nick gets pleasure even from the lesser lights: ‘Bad horses can probably win only once. Everything has to be right for them: race, ground, weight. They are often bad because they are not trying very hard; you’ve got to coax it out of them. They win, they go up 8lb, and that’s probably it. But it gives you enormous pleasure to get that win.’
There is plenty of pleasure ahead at Downs House, where fresh energy is being injected into deep National Hunt tradition. At 34, Nick Gifford has all the enthusiasm of youth but is not making the mistake of being in too much of a hurry.
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