It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables
It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables. Trainer Jamie Osborne is on his own but brews fresh coffee from a cafetière, served in matching mugs. Jamie, who always had style as well as courage in the saddle, does things properly as a trainer, too.
The huge flat cap and toothy grin give him the air of a charming ragamuffin who will never grow up. When he began in 2000 he was just another former jump jockey trying his hand at training. And since he had been a class act in the saddle, riding five winners at one Cheltenham Festival, many doubted if he would succeed. Isn’t it only average to middling jockeys who make it as top trainers, like Philip Hobbs and Paul Nicholls?
Two winners at Royal Ascot this year, the two-year-old Drawnfromthepast and the Queen Alexandra Stakes winner Enjoy the Moment, plus the Glorious Goodwood victory of Docofthebay have been a reminder that Jamie Osborne, who opted to train Flat horses rather than jumpers, has for some time been supping at the top table. The first Royal Ascot winner came with Irony in 2001, his first Group One when Milk it Mick won the Dewhurst.
Few in the racing world are as much fun to spend a few hours with as Jamie. But for all the ready laughter he is a thinking trainer, well aware of Sir Mark Prescott’s observation that horses are born with an insane urge to destroy themselves and that it is a trainer’s main purpose to delay that outcome for as long as possible.
One among a group who had successfully bid in a charity auction for a morning on Jamie’s gallops inquired why his horses were not wearing bandages on their legs like those of another string we passed.
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