PROFILE
COLIN TIZZARD ON FA R MI NG , FA M ILY AN D T HE TRAINERS’ TITLE
H
e’ll win the King George, two years’ time, you wait and see!” Given that the speaker is Colin Tizzard, who has saddled the last two winners of the Grade 1 chase, the opinion carries weight, but a warm chuckle from him downplays the gravity of his statement. Tizzard, his son Joe, and a group of owners are in jovial mood as they watch a pair of promising young novices school upsides at the trainer’s Venn Farm in Dorset, south-west England. Home to some of the most successful trainers, past and present, in National Hunt (Jumps) racing, the region has long been a hotbed for the sport and also for Point-to-Point (PTP) racing, a related category of amateur thoroughbred racing over fences which is often a starting point in the careers of National Hunt jockeys, trainers, and horses. Tizzard is one of a number of trainers in the area who have a background in Point-to-Points and have made a successful transition to racing under Rules. His team has firmly established itself as one of the top 20 National Hunt stables in the country season in and season out, having started with two pointers to support his son’s embryonic riding career more than two decades ago, while also running the family dairy farming business. The stable’s run of form has notably progressed from very good to excellent in the past three years. Last season was Tizzard’s best to date, when he finished third in the trainers’ championship to the two trainers who have
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TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 60
Oscar Yeadon
Sarah-Jane Bullock
dominated the British National Hunt scene for the past decade or so, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls. So what has propelled Colin Tizzard to the highest echelons of the trainers’ table? One can certainly trace the origins of the stable’s current form to the emergence of Cue Card, who has long been one of the cornerstones of the Tizzard string. Since beating the highly regarded Al Ferof to win the Champion Bumper on only his second start, Cue Card not only elevated the profile of the stable but reassured the team that they were heading in the right direction. “Cue Card came along when we were just ticking along with 15-20 winners per year, and we thought we were flat out at that point, but he gave us the confidence that we could do it,” says Tizzard. In the seven years since that memorable day at Cheltenham, the stable proved they could indeed do it, and across the board, with nearly 20 individual Graded or Listed winners. Everything came together in the 2016/17 season for the Tizzards: third place in the trainer rankings, 33% more runners than the previous season but with a near-identical winning strike rate, plus six individual Grade 1 winners. So, what next? “We won £2.5 million last season, including Irish prize money, and it would be amazing if we could do that again,” enthuses Tizzard. “It is exciting; some of those four-year-olds we schooled this morning aren’t just winners, they’re potential Cheltenham horses.” When asked how he would assess his chances of landing the trainers’ championship this season, he takes a typically practical view of his situation.