The Turf | 24 October 2009

It takes a lot to keep me away from Newmarket’s Champions’ Day meeting but the prospect of an hour on stage at Cheltenham’s Literary Festival with Ruby Walsh and Paul Nicholls talking about Paul’s autobiography Lucky Break (Orion, £20) was lure enough. The champion trainer’s careers master might have been surprised to find the ever-reluctant schoolboy there. When Paul said he wanted to go into racing he warned him, ‘You will never make a living out of horses.’ Uh-huh? Paul’s horses have won some £3.5 million in each of the past two seasons.

The ‘lucky break’ occurred when a horse kicked out in a Devon lane in 1989 and painfully shattered Paul’s left leg. Not most people’s idea of good fortune, but for him the turning point towards a training career. Even as he lay awaiting the ambulance he dreamed of big meals awaiting him in hospital. He had for nine years tortured himself to keep a big policeman’s body (both his father and grandfather were in the force) two stone at least below his natural weight in order to go on being a jockey.

Much of his riding life, he admits, was like being terminally ill as he starved, tossed down the ‘pee pills’ and sweated on the way to the races in a tracksuit, coat, a woolly hat and bin bags with arm holes cut out.

The champion trainer is unduly modest about his achievements in the saddle, accepting the label of ‘journeyman’ and saying, ‘I was exactly the kind of jockey I would not employ now.’ He twice won the Hennessy Gold Cup and had a Welsh National to his credit too. But the second lucky break came when big-time dairy farmer Paul Barber, whose ambition was to milk 1,000 cows and win a Cheltenham Gold Cup, chose Paul from the applicants to be the tenant of Manor Farm Stables in Ditcheat.