Adam Houghton paid a first visit to Colin Tizzard's Venn Farm - and found trainer-in-waiting Joe Tizzard in good form ahead of the Cheltenham Festival.
It was my first time visiting Venn Farm on Tuesday morning and it will almost certainly be my last time visiting the yard whilst the name Colin Tizzard still appears front and centre, sitting proudly above the entrance to the first large barn from where this year’s Cheltenham Festival contenders emerge.
Set to hand over the licence to his son Joe at the end of the season, Colin showed no outwards signs that he was feeling sentimental in the build up to his final Festival as a trainer. Indeed, in an early sign of the changing of the guard perhaps, Colin was hardly to be seen at all, leaving the role of master of ceremonies to fall very much on Joe’s shoulders.
My own interaction with Colin lasted barely a few seconds – “typical that you would choose the coldest morning of the year to come and see us!” he shouted from his truck shortly before we departed – so it was left to Joe to give us some valuable insight into the mindset of a man now well into the twilight of his training career.
When discussing the plan to bypass the Cheltenham Festival with Fiddlerontheroof and go straight to the Grand National, Joe recalls a conversation he had with his father around Christmas.
“Where are we going to run that horse [Fiddlerontheroof]?” asked Colin. “He hasn’t run for a long time.” When it was put to him by Joe that the Grand National might be a suitable target in the spring, Colin is said to have guffawed before exclaiming “I’ll have that in my name still!”
There should be little doubt, therefore, that Colin is keen to make the most out of what remains of his training career, and there would be few more popular results at the Festival than if he were to saddle another winner at the meeting, adding to a tally which currently stands at seven.
And if he doesn’t, Colin will be able to retire from the training ranks safe in the knowledge that his final victory at the Festival was achieved in the biggest prize of them all, the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Native River was one of 11 winners at the meeting for British-based trainers when he won the Gold Cup in 2018, a total which the home team would probably be more than happy with in 2022 if their mauling at the hands of the Irish last year is anything to go by.
The Tizzard team put up sterner resistance than most of their compatriots in 2021. For example, just imagine that a ferry strike had prevented any Irish runners from taking part at last year’s Festival, or that the Covid-19 pandemic had intervened in similar fashion, and the yard would have enjoyed one of its best ever weeks at Cheltenham.
Oscar Elite would have won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, while Fiddlerontheroof and The Big Breakaway would have a led home a one-two for the stable in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase. Most significantly of all, Native River would have registered a second success in the Gold Cup three years after his first.
In reality, however, being best of the British was only good enough for Native River to finish fourth in the latest edition of the Gold Cup – fully 30 lengths behind the winner Minella Indo – and the facts shows that the Tizzards have now sent out 50 runners at the Festival since Native River did genuinely win chasing’s blue riband, and they have all been beaten.
The growing influence of the Irish has inevitably played a part in that losing run, with last year’s Festival proving a perfect case in point, but Joe is optimistic of a better showing from the home team as we return to a packed Prestbury Park in less than two weeks.
“We were having a bad season, but we had a good Cheltenham last year,” he said. “We ended up getting a few places and we did as well as any among the British trainers behind Nicky [Henderson].
“This Irish domination isn’t something we’re going to fix overnight, but I don’t think it will be the same necessarily four or five years from now. At the moment, they’ve got a real good bunch of horses, but I think we can be competitive.
“What did the British trainers win last year? Five? Well, we’ll win more than that – there is some good horses going in there. I don’t think it’s that big a thing, they just had a year where they’ve got some seriously good horses. They’re not easy to come by, but hopefully we’ll have the next flush of good horses.
“We’re competitive people, we don’t want to follow them round. But there is nothing you can do about it overnight either, you’ve just got to trust what you do and how you source your horses.
“You have to back yourself and you’d be lying if you said I’m fine for the Irish to come over and win them all. There is not a trainer in England who would say that.”
So, which horses from the Tizzard team are best placed to try and stop the Irish from coming over and sweeping all before them at this year’s Festival?
Runner-up to Shishkin in last year’s Sporting Life Arkle – one of the few races at the meeting in which the Brits dominated – Eldorado Allen has risen through the ranks this season to become the best horse in the yard with a Timeform rating of 164, notably proving better than ever when winning the Denman Chase at Newbury last time.
As for Eldorado Allen’s likely target at the Festival, I still had the words of Gordon Elliott in my head when I drove to Venn Farm this morning, specifically his recent comments about Conflated and which race he would run in at Cheltenham.
“[I’d go for] the Gold Cup,” Elliott explained. “Michael [O’Leary, owner] wants to go for the Ryanair, I want to go for the Gold Cup, so we’ll probably have an argument for five minutes and normally he gets his way, but I hope I get mine. There’s only one Gold Cup. If you win the Ryanair, that’s grand, but the Gold Cup is the Gold Cup.”
Were the Tizzards having any second thoughts after stating in the aftermath at Newbury that Eldorado Allen would run in the Ryanair rather than being supplemented for the Gold Cup?
“We are going to run him in the Ryanair,” Joe immediately confirmed when the handsome grey made his appearance in the puddle-filled parading area before us.
“There was talk of sticking him in the Gold Cup after he won the Denman Chase, but it’s £30,000 to supplement him – I reckon if it was £10,000, they might have done it.
“I’m not sure he’s an out-and-out stayer. There’s a big difference between three miles on good ground around Newbury and three-miles-and-two-furlongs in a Gold Cup. We’ve all had a chat about it and for now I think he’s a Ryanair horse.
“He has always been a nice horse and I think he goes into the Ryanair with a nice chance. He doesn’t mind a bit of decent ground. Allaho will take a hell of a lot of beating, but you shouldn’t be afraid of one horse.
“I’m not saying we can beat him, but I’d rather run him in a Ryanair at this stage than over three-miles-and-two-furlongs in a Gold Cup.”
The result of those running plans is that the Tizzards will be without a runner in the Gold Cup for the first time since 2015. In the interim, the yard has sent out one winner, two thirds, two fourths and a sixth in chasing’s blue riband, while who knows how Cue Card would have fared but for falling when seemingly still full of running in 2016?
Native River, who ran at a total of six Cheltenham Festivals between 2015 and 2021, was the latest high-profile retirement announced by the yard at the end of last year, but Lostintranslation is one stable stalwart who will be back for more in 2022.
Beaten just a length and a half into third in the 2020 Gold Cup, Lostintranslation will be making his fifth appearance at the Festival when he faces the starter this year. Interestingly, he is likely to forego another crack at the Gold Cup in favour of the Ultima Handicap Chase, a race in which he could be “quite tasty” according to Joe if finding the calmer waters of a handicap more to his liking.
Native River and Lostintranslation were both put in their place in novice hurdles at the meeting as young horses, but it certainly didn’t do their future prospects any harm and Joe is hopeful that a similar experience will put hairs on the chest for the likes of Jpr One (Supreme Novices’ Hurdle) and Scarface (Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle), both promising sorts but unlikely to be capable of troubling the very best novices around.
Instead, Joe puts forward the two runners in the Grand Annual, namely Amarillo Sky and Elixir du Nutz, as other good chances of a winner, while he also gives a positive mention to War Lord, who will attempt to follow in the footsteps of Eldorado Allen by hitting the frame in the Sporting Life Arkle.
And, whilst Joe concedes that there won’t be a “standout” horse such as Cue Card or Native River representing the team at Cheltenham this year, he stresses that the pressure is no less intense, his brain clearly working overtime like that of a trainer already.
As for how Colin is feeling, I must admit to being none the wiser, but his achievements as a trainer speak for themselves, taking this yard from humble beginnings to now being one of the most powerful in the country.
It was a pleasure to pay my first visit, even on the coldest morning of the year.