I dreamt about riding horses, now it’s for real
Twenty years after scoring his first goal for Liverpool, Michael Owen looks forward to his debut in the saddle
MICHAEL OWEN is bursting with excitement as he takes out his phone and flicks through some photographs.
‘Here... have a look at this!’ he says. It is a video which shows one of the horses in training at Owen’s Manor House Stables happily bounding up the all-weather gallop at a rhythmic pace.
The rider on its back won’t win any artistic prizes but he has the beast firmly under control.
‘And I’m not going to fall off!’ Owen adds, proudly. The former England striker has never hidden his love for horseracing, but in recent months his affection for it has become more profound.
He has signed up to ride in a charity race at Ascot on November 24 and the footage we watch confirms he has embraced the challenge. Part of the reason he accepted it was to improve his fitness. Trying to make the 12st weight has jolted him, given the scales now read 12st 12lb. As a footballer, he weighed 11st 8lb.
The main factor, however, is much simpler. ‘I have dreams about riding horses,’ says Owen, 37, who talks with the enthusiasm of someone who is fulfillingng a life’s ambition, yet can’t quite believe he has the chancece to do so. Aside from that, he is aware how perilous lifefe in the saddle can be.
An incident duringg just his second time on horseback brought that into sharp focus after Tom Dascombe, the trainer at Manor House,, gave him a crash coursee when working the stringng morning exercise. The blunt instructions were:: ‘Go on then, ride!’
Owen says: ‘I’d literallyerally never ridden before. I had been asked to take part in races before but always said no. Then I thought about Victoria Pendleton riding at Cheltenham (in 2016) and I was asked again, so I thought, “Sod it!” I needed something to focus on.
‘Every sport is the same. You think it looks easy on TV but go and do it live and it is virtually impossible. I’m finding that out now! I’ve got massive respect for anyone who can control half a ton of animal.
‘There was this one morning when I was fighting to keep a horse straight at the top of the gallops. Someone shouted, “OK, we’re ready!”
‘My lad heard that and just turned on a sixpence. He went from nothing to 35mph in two strides. How I hung on, I don’t know! I honestly thought 25 horses were about to stampede over me.
‘Then I had one day when I came off after the tack slipped. That didn’t bother me at all, bubut the horhorse did a ccoupleou of things where I thoughtthought, “This is quite scary”.scary” ‘But I’m sure the race will be good fun… I hope!’
Owen is in high spirits as he holds court in the owner’s lounge of this state-of-the-art complex, which sits in 110 acres of glorious Cheshire countryside. This is a big week for him and the stable, because the May Festival at Chester, outside Royal Ascot, is the meeting where he most wants winners.
It is all a far cry from the rigours of football. He closed that particular chapter of his life four years ago this month, but he is momentarily jolted when reminded that last Saturday was the 20th anniversary of his first Premier League goal, scored for Liverpool against Wimbledon.
‘ I sometimes look at the players who are still playing and think I should be, too,’ Owen says. ‘I was only 33 when I packed it in but it was the right time. They were the good old days, weren’t they?’
He trusts there will be more good days before this week is out. Big Time Maybe has a bad draw but carries stable confidence in the opening Lily Agnes Stakes today (1.50), while Arc Royal is felt by Dascombe to be ‘dangerously well handicapped’. The gelding runs at 3pm tomorrow.
It is impossible to talk horses with Owen, though, and not mention Brown Panther, his pride and joy who won at Chester in May 2011, on the day he was playing in a Champions League semi-final for Manchester United against Schalke.
Brown Panther went on to win a raft of big races but was fatally injured in Ireland in September 2015, during what would have been his penultimate start ahead of a career as a stallion.
‘We would have had his babies in the yard now,’ Owen says.
‘It was such a terrible shame, but what can you do? I will never love another horse as much as I loved him, but I understand the sport. Nothing could put me off racing.’