As jump racing reaches its high point this month with the four-day Cheltenham Festival, Simon Horsford talks to Harriet Dickin, a young, local trainer with racing in her blood. Image above: Exercising the horses on the all-weather gallops above Midford Valley | Image by FW Equine Photography
T he romance, heartbreak and unpredictable thrill of jump racing.” That quote, from a book by the esteemed former jockey and broadcaster Lord Oaksey, came back to me on a cold but blissfully rain-free January morning, as I watch a string of horses trained by Harriet Dickin on the all-weather gallops just above Midford Valley. It’s a vision of beauty and muscular power as seven horses are put through their paces. Dickin, 30, has been based at Upper Twinhoe Stables for the past couple of years, and I’m watching the session with her dad, Robin, a former successful jockey and trainer himself, who has deftly driven me up to our vantage point, overlooking a picturesque lake, in his trusty Gator, a well-used, all-terrain utility vehicle.
Back in the warmth of the stables as the work-riders tuck into tea and crumpets next door, I wonder what advice Dickin had been given before she took over the training license from her father in 2022? “Jonjo O’Neill [the Grand National-winning trainer and former champion jockey], said ‘pick something else’, laughs Dickin. “It’s a difficult question, but the biggest thing from me is to learn when you get it wrong. If you run a horse on a certain ground or track and it doesn’t work, like, remember that. Don’t run until it has got its ground and don’t be rushed into running if the owner says, ‘I’ve owned this four months, why hasn’t it run?’, say because it hasn’t had the right ground. So many things can go wrong and are out of our control. You have to have everything you can control – they are animals after all – perfect. So you’ve got to tick every box you can and then you are in the hands of the gods.” Earlier when I’d asked Robin what advice he’d given his daughter, he’d joked, “With Harriet, it pays for her to ask for advice, not to be given it because she’s probably not going to take it. Even at school, she once said to one of the teachers, ‘I want to see you in your office after this lesson.’’ He then adds, “patience with the horses and don’t make any enemies.”
Horse racing is a sport of occasionally unique highs and lows, does that make it harder for a young trainer? “It can be disheartening, you can have winners but also lose a horse [if it dies, or sustains a career-ending injury]. But you just have to carry on, there’s no other way. If you can’t get on with it, you can’t train racehorses,” says Harriet. That resilience seems to be standing her in good stead and is part of her upbringing, “When we were growing up, if you hurt yourself someone would say ‘just get on with it’. Nowadays people are easily offended, or find something difficult, they stop.” The real thrill for Harriet, though, is winning, “100 per cent, that’s why you get up in the morning.”
And Robin, who will be 73 next month, adds, “The highs are so high, it makes up for the 80 per cent disappointment. Those highs are winning and the thrill of breeding a horse and having them right from scratch.” It’s a point he made earlier to me as we watched a couple of broodmares in a field having their breakfast feed. “It’s a very special thing [breeding from a mare], seeing them foal, [the foal] then grows, goes into training and hopefully wins races. It’s something money can’t buy and whilst there are horses that make millions, for many it’s not about the money, it’s about a member of your family becoming a really good athlete.”
“Everyone wants to have runners and winners at Cheltenham, but the horses that can run there are one in a 100. It’s tough.”
Harriet who “could ride before I could walk” was obviously steeped in a racing as a child but initially had no designs on being a trainer. She rode in a race over hurdles aged 16 (coming third) at Exeter but then took up eventing, a sport in which she met her eventual husband Dominic Ruane, now part of the team at Upper Twinhoe (comprising four full-time and three part-time stable staff). When the family, which also includes mum Claire, who runs the racing stables office and finances and liaises with owners, moved from Robin’s training base at Alne Park in Alcester, Warwicks, it was then that Harriet decided to take up the reins as Robin had decided to stop training.
That in itself was hardly surprising as the Shropshire-born Robin rode the first of 115 winners aged 16 back in 1969 and after giving up riding in 1986 following a skull fracture sustained in a fall at Towcester, he began training. He went on to saddle more than 500 jump (mainly) and flat winners. Highlights included riding a winner at Cheltenham and six winners at Aintree when the fences were far more formidable than they are now as Robin recalls, “They were extremely fierce. Going to the start of the Topham [Chase], which is one-and-a-half times round the Grand National fences, I asked David Sunderland [the late, former Irish jockey] for any tips for me and he said ‘Ah Jaysus, it’s the same as riding over hurdles, the only difference is on take-off, let go of the reins, grab the back of the saddle and shut your eyes.” As for training, he adds his best moments were saddling 11 winners at Cheltenham.
Initially, the family moved to a stables at Bourton-on-the-Water but that didn’t work out so when the opportunity to rent Upper Twinhoe came about they grabbed at the chance. “Fate brought us here,” says Robin, who remains involved at Upper Twinhoe, “we’re loving Somerset and Bath”, while Harriet enthuses about the facilities at the dual-purpose yard, which includes 43 ‘state-of-the-art’ stables, two all-weather gallops, an arena and two horse-walkers all set in 30 acres. “The gallops and facilities are brilliant,” says Harriet. She explains “you want a stiff test up the hill on the gallops, so you’re doing enough with the horses but not too much. [Here] you’ve got just the right gradient and then a flat bit at the top so you can get a bit of speed into them. Also the air flow in the barns [it was originally a dairy farm] is clean so the horses are always healthy [thanks to] the way barns are designed and its high up location.”
Image: Steven Cargill / Racingfotos.com
Harriet’s first winner was Ballinslea Bridge at Market Rasen on December 1, 2022. Last year there were 12 winners “and 52 per cent of our runners won prize money”, she adds; so far this season [as of mid February] she’s had three winners.“Anybody that can break 10 per cent or above [winners in a season] that’s good.” But this is not a level playing field and is one dominated by the “supermarket” trainers, as Robin calls them, (ie the likes of Irish duo Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, who have 200-plus horses each under their wing). He puts his own career and that of his daughter and many other of the smaller trainers in the “village shop” category – proud that in his day he was in the “top 10 of village shop” trainers, but reiterating how hard it is to compete against the “big boys” – harder than it was in his day.
“Everyone wants to have runners and winners at Cheltenham,” continues Harriet, “but the horses that can run there are one in a 100. It’s tough. If you can make a living out of it [racing] and be making money then you’re doing pretty well. It’s difficult to do even for the bigger trainers. In the short-term you have to pick realistic targets.” And she adds: I’d love to have horse with JP [McManus, one of the biggest and most successful owners in racing] – that’s on the bucket list.”
The “monopoly” of the big yards is “ridiculous”, says Harriet, suggesting that trainers should be limited to the number of horses they can run a big handicap race rather than be allowed to have several runners. This, in turn, she argues, might lead to the talent being spread more fairly. “There are so many trainers, myself included, that are perfectly capable but they don’t have the ammunition because owners are putting their half a million pound horses into those big stables.”
As in other sports, there are those who want a quick return on their investment – keeping a horse in training is expensive, costing from around £20,000 a year – but for many owners, says, Harriet, it’s a case of “if they can see their horse two [fences] out and shout ‘go on’ and its competitive, that’s 95 per cent of it. If they put money back in the pot even better.” It’s about “having a horse to shout for,” adds Robin.
Another pressing concern, one shared by many in racing, is the feeling that the industry as a whole is under-appreciated by the government, “they don’t want the countryside,” says Robin dismissively. Farmers might agree. Considering that the racing industry as a whole is worth £4.1 billion to the economy and directly and indirectly involves 85,000 jobs that appears as a misstep. Both feel the mooted trail-hunt ban by the current government would also be hugely damaging for racing as it would curb the point-to-points that feed jump racing. “It would be the end of point-to-pointing,” says Harriet.
On a more positive note, Harriet says of her current string, “we’ve got a lot of really nice young horses. Lord of All Saints is probably the best horse, potentially.
“Daring to Dream, I like her a lot. She’s complicated and she’s buzzy but starting to do things the right way and getting better. Pipas Lescribaa is another to look out for. She’ll go chasing next season. Not a world-beater, but she’ll win plenty of races and be a good, fun competitive horse.”
Harriet says 60 per cent of her owners are part of syndicates and 40 per cent individuals; to further push the family connection Robin’s son Chris owns one of the stable’s horses, Kingoftheswingerz with a small syndicate. Impressively, all 43 boxes at the yard are filled with 32 of the horses in training and 11 resting or in pre-training.
As she saddles up to take out another lot, Harriet says she prefers to do the training from the back of a horse “as [here] there’s no way you can see the whole gallop so you have to be with them. Between me a Dom, we probably sit on all of them once a month. I look at how they are travelling, if the jockey is having to ask them to go on, or if they are keen and how quickly they have got to the top of the gallop. You know when they are ready [to race].” Is there a secret to knowing when a horse is right? “You just have a feeling. It’s really something you can’t teach.” Then again Harriet is drawing on her experience of having ridden work for 20-odd years, plus there’s her dad’s near 60 years in the business. And they certainly do travel in search of the right race, “I’ll send horses anywhere – Kelso [in Scotland], Ireland or France. I’d love to have a runner in the American Grand National [run at Far Hills, New Jersey].”
During my visit, Harriet and Robin both joke separately about not having proper jobs, but this really is a “way of life”, as Robin puts it, and the knowledge, care and attention to detail that Harriet shows for the “delicate machines” in her charge is evident in all aspects of the yard. Jump racing is a hugely demanding sport, one that requires time, energy, patience and no little stoicism, but for Harriet, like Robin, the allure appears to be irresistible.
harrietdickinracing.co.uk