Few experiences in racing are as guaranteed to cheer you up as a visit to Oliver Sherwood’s lovely yard in Upper Lambourn. Trying vainly to match strides with Oliver back and forth across the Mandown schooling grounds on a frosty morning last week, as Leighton Aspell, Sam Jones and stable conditional Tom Garner polished the jumping skills of the Rhonehurst inhabitants, it was hard to believe from his still almost boyish enthusiasm and energy that this is a man who nearly qualifies for the ‘veteran’ label. Oliver has been in Lambourn since he succeeded Nicky Henderson as Fred Winter’s assistant back in 1978, the year before he also became champion amateur rider, and he has been training since 1984.
So why don’t we hear more of him? The Sherwood name has not been as prominent in recent seasons as in the days when he trained Arctic Call to win the Hennessy, when Large Action finished second twice in the Champion Hurdle and Oliver clocked up half a dozen Cheltenham Festival victories. There is one simple reason: he is one of a band of talented trainers suffering from the Squeeze on the Middle. The winners are still there — in a purple patch lately Rhonehurst has sent out ten in a month — but in racing now most of the top-class expensive horses are sent by their owners to three or four top multi-horsepower yards. The more yards like those of Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls hoover up the big sponsored prizes on Saturdays, the more the process intensifies.
As Kaituna and Circus of Dreams, Mischievous Milly and Lady Sinatra negotiated the obstacles — ‘Fred Winter always said that a good hurdler should brush through the top rather than clearing the hurdle’ — Oliver acknowledged the problem: ‘It’s the same in football and in supermarkets. The big are getting bigger and the pressure is on the smaller ones.’ What he won’t do is compromise his methods. He still likes to bring on unraced ‘store’ horses and has an owner in Tim Syder with the patience to encourage him. When I suggested he might try to peak a few earlier before the multi-horsepower yards have fully revved up, Oliver was almost shocked. ‘I won’t cut corners. Start pressing the buttons too early and that is when tendons can go twang.’
He is not resentful of the big boys’ success, indeed he is friends with both the top two. When the Sherwoods’ house burned down last year, Paul Nicholls, who had briefly been married to Tarnya Sherwood, texted Oliver, ‘I always told you she couldn’t cook!’ Recently Oliver and Nicky Henderson both wanted a filly obtained by Highflyer Bloodstock called Mischievous Milly. They agreed to toss for it and Oliver won, but when she ran first time out the horse that pipped her in a close finish was Henderson’s Polly Peachum.
There’s no mystery about training, says Oliver. Anyone can get horses fit. ‘It’s about getting to know their idiosyncracies, their little wants. If there is any skill in training it is getting inside a horse’s mind.’ If he can read his mind, Oliver may have a horse this year to put him back in the big race winners’ enclosure. Puffin Billy, who had waltzed away with a bumper at Ascot, was neat over his hurdles that morning. The next day he came out and won impressively over obstacles at Newbury. So he is No. 1 in my Twelve to Follow this season and I’ll include Mischievous Milly too.
I was much impressed with David Pipe’s grey Our Father, who jumped beautifully on his novice chase debut at Cheltenham, and Jonjo O’Neill looks to have a decent long-distance handicap hurdle prospect in Holywell, second to Trustan Times at Haydock. Evan Williams and his canny stable jockey Paul Moloney, a great man for educating a horse, have been bringing along Court Minstrel carefully. He wasn’t suited by his race behind Dodging Bullets and remains a good novice hurdle prospect. Another in that category is Ifandbutwhynot, trained by the advancing David O’Meara. At the other end of the scale, I cannot see Willie Mullins’s Sir des Champs failing to feature in next year’s Gold Cup and Jessica Harrington surely has another class novice hurdler in Jezki, who won stylishly at Fairyhouse on Sunday.
I sang Charlie Longsdon’s praises last season and he should continue scoring with Pendra, who won again at Plumpton on Monday. Nigel Twiston-Davies’s The New One has won both his hurdle races so far and looks a true Cheltenham Festival prospect and Emma Lavelle’s Claret Cloak hurdled well on his seasonal return on ground that did not suit.
I hope and pray The Giant Bolster will win a big race this season for his heart-on-sleeve trainer David Bridgwater, and I am keeping an eye on Tim Vaughan’s Beshabar for the Grand National. But for the twelfth of our twelve, compiled as ever with the crucial assistance of Timeform’s Chasers and Hurdlers 2011/12 (Portway Press, £75), I will go with Venetia Williams Reginaldinho, who might pop up at a useful price in a handicap chase.
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