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. I don’t want 100.’
At the recent Paris sales (what did Mrs Susannah Mann buy?) he acquired three more for nearly £250,000 including Borero, an unbeaten four-year-old novice hurdler. Others who should star in what should be a landmark season include Shining Gale, an Irish point-to-point winner, and Air Force One, ‘the closest to a Gold Cup horse I have yet had in the yard’, though this Cheltenham Festival hurdles second will have to improve his sticky jumping first time out over the bigger obstacles.
Stellenbosch and Gauvain should do well in novice chases and Kanad has already won a big handicap hurdle at Ascot, ridden by stable apprentice Kevin Tobin.
Established stars include My Turn Now, winner of six races last season, and Moon Over Miami, an exciting young novice chaser who was a bit of a tearaway last year but who is now learning to settle.
Not a great believer in bloodstock agents — ‘You don’t see many agents in the unsaddling enclosure when a horse gets beaten’ — Charlie travels regularly to Germany to buy jumpers like the promising Laredo Sand, Sullumo and Sayago, saying, ‘A horse you’d pay £80,000 for there would fetch £200,000 here.’
Buying old-fashioned ‘store’ horses which will take years to mature, he says, no longer makes commercial sense. ‘Only 5 per cent of them are winners. That’s 20 horses out of 400. You try to halve the process looking for point-to-pointers with form. At least you know they’ve got an engine.’
You can buy a morning on the gallops with Charlie through the Red Letter Day enterprise. When I was there one guest asked him, ‘What do you look for in a horse?’ ‘Same as you look for in a bird really,’ came the reply. ‘You’ve got to be attracted. It is important you should like it the first time you see it. I look for something athletic, something that swings by.’
His regular clashes with authority have nearly cost the outspoken Mann dear. He was warned publicly after two cases of mixed-up passports and running the wrong horse that he could lose his licence next time. ‘OK, one of my staff cocked up, and the buck stops with me.’ But perhaps he shouldn’t have named his daughter’s pet orang-utan after a steward.
What really angers him is, ‘I’ve been done twice for stopping horses and I haven’t stopped a horse in my life.’ One hefty fine particularly riled him. ‘The horse bled out of both nostrils. What’s wrong is that if you don’t beat up a horse the stewards have you in for not trying.’ Would it be wiser, perhaps, to make a little less noise in racing controversies? ‘I’ve always spoken my mind. I do think a lot of people don’t speak out when they should.’
The sociable Mann, who probably weighs less now than when he rode for a living, is one of the most recognisable figures on the racecourse. He is not shy of colour. No one’s hats have snappier or wider brims. But while he insists that training is increasingly becoming a young man’s game the easy laugh doesn’t quite cloak the determination of a man who has built up an impressive enterprise and who still has the competitive streak he showed in the saddle: ‘If you relax for an instant someone will come up your inner.’
What he needs now is that elusive first Cheltenham Festival winner. Two years ago he thought he’d done it. ‘Merchant’s Friend jumped the last 17 lengths clear — and then got beaten. I had said to Susannah that if he won I would take her on a skiing holiday. I was nearly on the phone to the travel agent.’
This year’s Festival brought a second and a third. Perhaps 2008 will be Charlie’s year.
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