There is nothing like a Cheltenham winner if your aim is to impress the jump-racing community and Britain’s newest trainer hopes he has done just that by means of a 50-1 success at the winter game’s spiritual home on Sunday.
Sam Drinkwater, a 26-year-old who received his licence a matter of weeks ago, has a perfect record at Cheltenham, having sent out Tour Des Champs to score on the New Year’s Day card there, beating placed horses from the stables of David Pipe, Paul Nicholls and Colin Tizzard.
“The phone’s been going quite a bit,” Drinkwater says, reflecting on his triumph at the yard bought by his family in late 2015 to support his ambition. A former jockey whose time in the saddle was ended by injury, Drinkwater sold his home, and his parents sold theirs, as resources were pooled to buy the stables. With them came 100 acres of Worcestershire land, previously used by an event rider and surprisingly tranquil considering they sit in the angle between the M5 and the M50.
“Dad’s always been mad keen on racing,” Drinkwater says. “The family have been a massive support through this. If you’d seen mum and dad on New Year’s Day … I had to give them that, because otherwise, none of it would have been worthwhile.”
Early success is important, also, for commercial reasons. Drinkwater has 10 horses, several owned by family members, and hopes to attract at least as many more. “I just needed Tour Des Champs to do well to try to get the owners in. So the pressure was on, really.”
Drinkwater has saddled a total of seven runners but it already seems clear he knows what he is doing. The first of his two successes came on Boxing Day while the eyes of the racing world were on Kempton but his were on Sedgefield, where the heavily backed Working Title won easily under his brother, Joe.
Like the Grand National-bound Tour Des Champs, Working Title is a veteran who long ago proved he had talent but has not always been able to express it. Drinkwater’s ability to keep such horses sweet and sound will be tested at Hereford on Wednesday, where Working Title runs again. The trainer fancies him. “It’s a very bad race. He’s got 12st 5lb but Joe takes off 7lb and he’s used to carrying 12st 7lb in point to points, so I can’t see that stopping him. It’s just if there’s an unexposed one lurking …”
Being a thoroughly modern trainer, Drinkwater planned the layout of his gallops by using Google Maps, seeking a route that would provide the greatest possible climb from the land available. “It’s not like a mountain that you find at some of the top yards,” he says, but it appears to be serving him well. Having installed one surface, he had the confidence to rip it up and lay another, more testing version last summer, to give his horses more of a test.
Asked to name a horse worth looking out for, Drinkwater says he is excited about Sergeant Brody, a half-brother to a Cheltenham Festival winner, The Package, and likely to be fitter next time than when making his hurdles debut recently. “He was quite an anxious type of horse when he came over from Ireland. It’s taken him a long time to mellow and chill out, so I didn’t want to gun him at home and get him lit up on the track. He could be quite nice.”
Drinkwater seems keen to work out what is going on in his charges’ heads and believes the key to his future success lies in keeping them happy and relaxed. He credits the trainers Tom Lacey, Fergal O’Brien and Nigel Twiston-Davies as his main influences.
Asked if he was always determined to have his own yard, Drinkwater recalls he “hated” horses until the age of 10. “There was a girl down the end of the road that I quite fancied and I remember her trotting her horse up the road. I said ‘Can I have a go, please?’ And so she chucked me up.”
