One of my favourite spectator sports is sitting, glass in hand, watching Mrs Oakley in the kitchen. There will be a stock reducing here, a pan with a few chopped leeks and onions there. A pinch of this, a sprinkle of that. A handful of coriander and a scrinch of lemon, a shlurp of rather better wine than should really be devoted to culinary purposes — and then probably another shlurp. It is all done with the confidence of a surgeon taking the first slice into a patient, the dexterity of a master cooper. There is no sign of the hesitation that seizes Mrs O when she is asked to choose from someone else’s menu in a restaurant.
In short she is not a book cook but an instinctive cook. And most of the best trainers are the same. Theirs is not an art which can be reduced to a syllabus or taught by correspondence course, which is why it proves so often to be a family business. The Easterbys or the Rimells, the Wraggs or the Hills, the Hannons and the Moores absorb racing lore through their pores.
The other morning I was at Andy Turnell’s yard at Broad Hinton, near Swindon. As the second lot clattered down the lane towards the snow-covered Wiltshire Downs you could see the ridge beyond which Andy’s much-respected father Bob had sent out from his training yard in the 1960s and 1970s horses like Bird’s Nest and The Laird. In those days the young Andy was competing for rides with Bill Rees and Jeff King and Johnny Haine. He was famous then for how high he hitched his leathers when he rode their burly hurdlers and hefty chasers. He did it partly, he says, because he had begun his riding career on the Flat. Partly it was the result of a knee injury when he found it less painful to ride that way.
‘Of course, I fell off on occasions and others liked to say then, “Of course, he’s riding too short.” But I didn’t fall more often than any of the others. It may have looked precarious but it didn’t feel like it.’
Andy’s riding career came to an end in 1982 as he took over his father’s yard on Bob Turnell’s premature death. By 1987 he had trained Maori Venture to win the Grand National. In 1993 he won the Hennessy Gold Cup with Cogent. There was Cheltenham success, too, with Katabatic winning the Champion Chase.
He had wanted to buy his father’s yard, but the owners laughed at his offer then sold the yard later for a third less. Andy moved to East Hendred, and then, enticed by Dr John Hollowood, who had made a fortune in pharmaceuticals, Andy moved to Yorkshire. Some might have been ecstatic to be taking over the Ramsdens’ former yard with its tennis court and elegant gardens. Andy’s practical reaction was, ‘Hang on, I’m here to train horses’…and his patron engaged a gardener.
There were ambitions to breed and race Flat horses, too, ambitions which succeeded to the extent of training the Derby fourth Jelani. But for family reasons Dr Hollowood eventually cut back and Andy moved south again. A chance meeting in the Newbury bar with Jeff King resulted in the purchase of the Broad Hinton yard where the famous ‘hard man’ of jump race-riding had been training. The 50-box yard has been spruced up and the return to his roots has seen a revival in Andy Turnell’s fortunes. He started at Broad Hinton with 12 horses and now has nearer 35. Gallops owner Nigel Bunter has been hugely helpful, long-time patrons like Laurie Kimber have maintained their loyalty and significant new owners like Martin Tedham have injected new blood.
Thirteen winners so far this season have revealed a lift in quality, too. The group I saw out on the roads included Dr Hollowood’s Blue Bajan, who won the Swinton Handicap Hurdle at Haydock in May and who was close up behind Harchibald and Snap Tie in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day. Andy, who won that race as a jockey on three different horses, was also second three times in the Champion Hurdle. Blue Bajan, who needs good ground, deserves his place in the big race and could just improve on his trainer’s record.
An even more impressive prospect for me is Micheal Flips, owned by Martin Tedham. A point-to-point winner over three miles, he has the scope to make a fine chaser. But in the meantime the gears he showed in winning the opening novice hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day make him good value for the Supreme Novices at 25–1.
Cheltenham bound, too, could be their road companions Jigsaw Dancer, a ten-length winner on his seasonal debut, the consistent Bible Lord, and the progressive novice chaser Cheating Chance, an Ascot winner.
Andy Turnell isn’t one to oversell his horses. You could almost call him old-fashioned. He calls Dr Hollowood ‘a real gent’ and gets up at 5 a.m. to feed the horses himself. ‘You know how your horses are by the way they look at you in the morning. You know the moment you walk in their box.’ At a ‘horrified-to-be-60’ he still rides out with the first lot. He sits on everything in the yard and, like his father, he doesn’t rush his horses. ‘There’s only so much mileage in them.’
And those ‘modern’ interval-training methods up near precipices? ‘Father was doing that in the 1950s.’ When you’ve been riding work since you were ten and booted home your first winner at 14 you really have seen it all before.
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