Speaking out

Upper Lambourn trainer Charlie Mann, who was forcibly retired as a jockey in 1989 by breaking his neck after riding around 150 winners, lists his hobby as ‘having fun’. His idea of doing just that included returning to the saddle in 1994, with a licence he printed for himself (a misdemeanour which cost him a £1,000 fine) to ride his horse It’s a Snip in the Pardubicka cross-country chase in the Czech Republic, a marathon test which includes crossing ploughed fields, banks and stone walls. They were second that year: the next year they won it.

Charlie’s mother was a Yorkshire showjumper who sold ponies. He never wanted to be anything but a jockey. Having secured the promise that if he won the Scottish pony championship at 15 he could leave his school at Sedbergh, he achieved that first objective and never took an exam.

When injury curtailed the riding career, during which he acquired ownership of seven Lambourn houses, Charlie, who clearly shares Woody Allen’s view that ‘having money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons’, tried life as a wheeler-dealer salesman trying to put together deals on diamonds, vodka and chicken legs. The million-pound breakthrough never came, despite an attempt to sell a submarine. He was conned out of £20,000 trying to flog ex-army tents to Kurdistan and, by the time the training bug bit, the seven houses had gone and he was skint.

After 14 years of training, the hard days are hopefully behind him. His spick-and-span Whitcoombe House stables and 40 acres cost £1.25 million. Together with Martin Myers’s Mountgrange Stud, he has developed a new Cushion Track gallop, planned to pay for itself within four years as he hires it out to other trainers. He rejoices that he has his best string ever. ‘It took a lot of doing to get 50 good horses.