The trainer who sings opera to her racehorses

Wetumpka Racing? When your yard is running at a handsome strike rate of 40 per cent wins to runs you can perhaps afford to name your racing partnership after a natural disaster. After all, it was 85 million years ago when a massive meteorite smashed into Alabama at Wetumpka. Trainer Heather Main, based in 90 acres of rural idyll at Kingston Lisle, near Lambourn, explains that Wetumpka is in fact an Indian word describing the bubbling waters of the river that resulted, and you have to agree that ‘Wetumpka Racing’ has a greater impact than something more traditional like H. Main Racing.

Located around a grand wisteria-clad 1718 farmhouse with ancient yew sentinels, the yard, which Heather runs with her popular vet husband James, has lately been among the winners. Island Brave scooped a handsome Ascot handicap prize, Mostawaa won impressively at Haydock, Island Nation took a mile and a half race at Kempton and Island Warrior scored over six furlongs after a 369-day break. Three victories over seven furlongs for Colonel Whitehead and stable apprentice Ellie Mackenzie will have given his trainer particular pleasure. ‘Because he was stocky and strong-minded,’ he was named after Heather’s grandfather, US Air Force Colonel Chauncey ‘Chuck’ Whitehead, who not only flew 4,000 hours training Superfortress B-29 pilots in the second world war but was also an accomplished artist whose paintings fill Heather’s home.

With enough land to grow their own hay and an uphill polytrack gallop behind the house (soon to be supplemented by another in a facing field), it is a quintessentially English scene but significantly the welcoming committee in this friendly yard includes not just three Jack Russells but a woolly-haired Chesapeake Bay retriever. Heather was raised in Alabama where she partnered well-muscled quarter horses, those power-packed track-scorchers: ‘It does teach you horsemanship and a good seat.’