Forgotten man

Genes, it seems, can survive a period of hell-raising.

‘I know that name. What else has he got?’ I heard a racegoer inquire of his companion at Kempton on Saturday, after Mark Rimell had trained Crossbow Creek to win the big race of the day, the Totesport Lanzarote Hurdle. The answer is: ‘For the moment, not very much.’ Mark Rimell has only one other older horse in his yard of 13 mostly untried youngsters. But that other horse is Oneway, with whom he had the previous Saturday captured the biggest race on the Sandown card, the Ladbrokescasino.com Handicap Chase, the chaser completing a four-timer in the process. The 34-year-old trainer certainly bears a name which racing folk will recognise, his grandfather Fred having numbered among his victories four winners of the Grand National (ESB, Nicolaus Silver, Gay Trip and Rag Trade) and a couple of the Cheltenham Gold Cup (Woodland Venture and Royal Frolic), with his wife Mercy later taking on the licence.

For Mark there has been some useful experience along the way, too, including learning time with David Nicholson, Josh Gifford, Nigel Twiston-Davies, Michael Dickinson and Jonathan Sheppard, though not all of that is recalled, it seems, in intimate detail. There were a few wild years, he admits, of wine, women and song. ‘Hopefully, some of it rubbed off through the alcoholic haze. It’s only in the past few years I’ve got my head together.’ More seriously, he pays tribute to the discipline and attention to detail he learnt from David Nicholson and to Nigel Twiston-Davies’s ability to get a horse fit. The former British three-day eventer now trains in his own right from his wife’s family’s estate near Witney, having sold his house to pay for the installation of a six-furlong Ecotrack gallop, which, he says, having ridden all round the world, is as good as any surface he has encountered.