The turf | 24 November 2016

Talking to Paul Nicholls earlier this season, I was shaken to hear the ultra-competitive champion trainer say that he wouldn’t want to be starting again now. If younger trainers are to get to the top they need somewhere they can train a hundred horses from, he said. ‘You need to be in the right place with the right opportunity. It’s very, very tough.’

Two young trainers most would back to make it are former Nicholls assistants Harry Fry and Dan Skelton, and the other major figure whose former assistants are making their mark is Nicky Henderson. Those who have graduated in recent years from Nicky’s Seven Barrows equine finishing school include Charlie Longsdon, Tom Symonds, Jamie Snowden and Ben Pauling. Add Lambourn-based Warren Greatrex and you have a Magnificent Seven to keep jump racing exciting for years to come — and a visit to Ben Pauling’s buzzing yard outside Bourton-on-the-Water convinced me that he could be the one to rival Skelton in future title races.

With a grandfather and father who acquired ‘hairy and scary’ ex-hurdlers from the sales, and trained them under permit for their own pleasure, Ben’s youth was the predictably horsey one of ponies, hunting and point-to-points. The point-to-pointing — his main interest while scraping a 2:2 degree in land management at Reading University — was complicated by Pauling’s 6ft 3in frame and then sadly terminated when he pulled a wire from a hedge and was blinded in one eye. Undaunted, he then became a whizz at team chasing. Despite becoming Britain’s Young Engineer of the Year while still at school for designing a pallet-wrapping device that didn’t require a forklift truck, and making useful money at Reading running student entertainments, Ben’s was always going to be a racing career.