Frank Keogh goes behind the scenes with the Twiston-Davies duo, plus Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls - there are a few surprises on the way.
“It’s hard, f***** hard. It’s a brutal job really.”
We’re on the gallops at a famous jump racing yard, and I’ve just randomly bumped into another trainer whose name is etched on Cheltenham’s roll of honour.
“I didn’t find it easy. I never really had an assistant and joint trainers didn’t exist,” says Jim Old, trainer of 1996 champion hurdler Collier Bay, when reflecting on his career.
As the sun graces the glorious Gloucestershire countryside on a life-affirming autumn day, we are watching the horses work at the stables of father and son Nigel and Willy Twiston-Davies.
The duo are among a growing breed to operate under a joint training licence. Hobbs and White, Greenall and Guerriero, Killahena and McPherson – they might sound like lawyers but are finding that two minds can be greater than one in horse racing.
‘We’re best friends’ – The Nigel and Willy Show
With a strike rate hitting 35% for much of October, something has been going right at Grange Hill Farm, Naunton, this corner of the Cotswolds where Grand National winners Earth Summit and Bindaree were trained.
There’s a quiet buzz, and an air of the unexpected, about the place as I ask former trainer Old, now aged 79, what he is actually doing here. “I’m on work experience,” jokes one of racing’s most endearing characters.
Next a cheery greeting from dual National-winning jockey Carl Llewellyn as he passes, while a prospective new owner is expected any minute and there’s talk of a small offshoot yard for new equine arrivals.
No one will deny the ability of Nigel Twiston-Davies to ready a racehorse for the big day – he saddled Imperial Commander to win the ‘War of the Wolds’ in 2010 - the Cheltenham Gold Cup billed as a two-horse race between Kauto Star and Denman.
But after more than four decades at the helm, the former farmer is now making hay with 32-year-old son Willy alongside him on the licence.
“The pressure's off, it’s not all on one person,” says Nigel, who turns 70 next year.
“I've been doing it by myself, I don't know how many years. It's quite a lonely job, you know, you've got no one else to really bounce off."
Joint training licences were introduced in 2020 by the British Horseracing Authority in the wake of the Covid pandemic and having been a success in Australia.
Nigel and Willy (sixth) are one of three pairings in the current top 10 of the British jump trainers’ championship along with fellow father and son Jonjo and AJ O’Neill (fourth) and Lucinda Russell and Michael Scudamore (eighth).
Willy, once a jockey like his brother Sam - the third cog in the Twiston-Davies wheel - is bringing a new lease of life into the yard. They recently started an Instagram account, overseen by Beth Robinson, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the stables.
“We're lucky that it's a family operation and we all get on very well. If I have a row with my brother, then 10 minutes later, we’re having a laugh,” says Willy.
Speaking to his father, he adds: “I don't really look at you like my dad, but more best friends, really. We do everything together, every day, whether there's the lot list or the declarations.
“If he's not here, we'd be on the phone 15, 10 times a day. We do all the entries and declarations together.
“When Dad started there was no such thing as social media. You'd probably call your owner once a week. Now people want constant updates, which I'm hopefully helping with. We’re trying to evolve the whole yard forward, get better quality, to progress.
“I love it. absolutely love it. Over the summer, we were recruiting new horses and we have owners who are good fun and enjoy it, which is the point, isn’t it? I wake up and I’m in paradise with this view - I pinch myself. I am very lucky.”
Sam regularly rides for the stable, winning recently on exciting novice chaser Potters Charm, along with a renewed partnership with 14-times champion trainer Paul Nicholls.
“Sam's a massive part of what we do - he probably goes under the radar a bit as far as the training side goes, but he sits down with myself and Dad when we make plans, we'll always run them by him,” says Willy.
“He's very good with the young jockeys in the yard, and with the schooling. He's very hands on, he paints all the fences and hurdles.
“Obviously he's got time yet, but when he makes a decision to stop riding, and eventually, when Dad thinks the time's right, I think Sam will just help me here."
Mr Frisk, a painting, and the hand of fate – Bailey and Nicholls
As a teenager growing up in central Nottingham during the 1990s, Mat Nicholls had never ridden or even touched a horse, but he would admire one on his living room wall every day.
His father, a salesman and racing fan, had been at an auction and snapped up a painting of Mr Frisk, who won the 1990 Grand National under amateur jockey Marcus Armytage in a record time for trainer Kim Bailey.
Fast forward to March 2026 and Mat shares the training licence with Bailey as they enjoy a Cheltenham Festival triumph together thanks to White Noise, a 40/1 winner of the mares’ novices' hurdle.
“We are both great believers in fate, and fate somehow brought us together,” says Nicholls, who at 48 is a quarter of a century younger than his training partner.
There’s plenty of pictures of Mr Frisk in the reception at the pair’s Thorndale Farm yard in Andoversford, which is less than 10 miles from the scene of Bailey’s big Cheltenham Festival double – Alderbook (Champion Hurdle} and Master Oats (Gold Cup) in 1995.
Bailey cuts a warm, relaxed figure and acknowledges that having Nicholls as one half of a partnership has improved his quality of life.
Rather than his usual seven days off in January, he was able to take a month away last year to visit one son, Harry, in Australia.
The arrangement also offers more time to follow the cricketing exploits of another son, Archie, a 21-year-old fast bowler who joined Durham from Gloucestershire last year.
“I'm no longer just Kim Bailey on the licence but I couldn't care less about that,” says the 73-year-old trainer.
“We do exactly the same as we’ve done for the last 19 years since Mat has been here and I promised him we would join up when I got to 1500 winners.
“It was quite a long time to find out I’d done it because I've been training so long that they haven't got any records. The joint licence has proved a really good thing. We're both very very involved but it does mean I can go and do things that I didn't do before."
Bailey is entertaining company who knows the vagaries of racing well.
Educated at the independent Radley School and via training spells in Lambourn and Northamptonshire before his current base, he went from Cheltenham king to 26 years without a Grade One winner and bounced back again.
He writes a daily blog before 6am and enthusiastically takes pictures on the gallops where a video camera at the top records footage for owners.
“What impressed me first about Kim was that even though he hadn’t been going well, he had this determination to get back on the ladder. His positivity and ambition were still intact,” says Nicholls.
He trod a different path – taking a BTEC course at Brackenhurst College, Southwell, that led to horse riding and a spell with Nigel Twiston-Davies which saw him become right-hand man of then assistant trainer Fergal O’Brien, now another member of the Gloucestershire training fraternity.
Nicholls stayed in the Cotwolds and spent several years with Tom George, where novice hurdler Galileo was an early Cheltenham winner.
He went on to be assistant to Llewellyn when he trained in Lambourn but Bailey’s prophecy that he would return to his training roots came true and the pair teamed up.
First Flow broke the Grade One drought in 2021 in the Ascot Chase, three Festival winners have followed and White Noise looks a top hurdling prospect this season before potentially going chasing next year.
“I’m a Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer, that was huge, I can’t put into words how big that was for me,” beams Nicholls.
“For me, there’s no way I would have trained without the dual licence. It does bring added pressure – I can’t hide behind Kim now – but having your name in the paper means you are no longer the assistant.
“Kim and I work so well as a team so I’m not ready to do this yet but I hope and pray in a few years’ time, I can make a go on my own."
As I finish chatting to Mat, we reflect on how his life has gone full circle.
“It was a pure coincidence my dad saw that painting, and it’s still on my mother’s wall in Nottingham,” he says.
“My mother Josie was actually a refugee. She came over when she was nine from Egypt, because of the Suez Crisis, with her parents and her uncle. They couldn’t speak a word of English between them.
“She left school at 15 and went to work in a factory which is where she met my dad – it’s a bit different to your usual racing background.”
More from Frank Keogh
More from Sporting Life
- Free bets
- Racecards
- Fast results
- Full results & free video replays
- Horse racing news
- Horse racing tips
- Horse racing features
- Download our free iOS & Android app
- Football & other sports tips
- Podcasts & video content
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
