Jack Channon talks Marcus Townend through some of his big hopes for the new Flat season.
There is an upbeat feeling at the historic West Ilsley stables where Jack Channon is aiming to build on the momentum he has created since taking over from his father Mick two years ago.
Forty nine winners in his debut season in 2023 were followed by 56 in Britain last year as well as the admirably consistent Certain Lad giving Channon his first group three win in the Le Coupe de Maisons-Laffitte.
Certain Lad is back again with some ambitious early-season targets and there is a mixture of experience and potential among a team of horses which has risen to 90 with some of the stable infrastructure also upgraded.
Channon said: ‘‘We have a new woodchip gallop and two-year-old colts’ barn so we are modernising and doing as much as I can with the money I have got. Every penny we earn we are pumping back into the facilities and trying to improve everything so we can to warrant more and better horses. In your first year, you don’t want to mess things up and the second one you want to improve things which we did. All our stats across the board took a jump up.
‘‘We had a little increase in horses last year and we have had another small increase this year so we want to improve on everything again. We have a pool of around 90 horses to go to war with. We have lots of nice horses, you just hope that one of them can become a very good horse. It’s hard to do that but we will continue to make the most of the ones we have.’’
