CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL JUMPING KNIGHTCLASS

How Henrietta turns wayward horses into Cheltenham winners

The days when henrietta Knight had winners at the Cheltenham Festival are history but that doesn’t mean she won’t have a huge influence on the biggest jumps meeting of the season.

The former teacher who guided three-time Gold Cup winner Best Mate before retiring as a trainer in 2012 has gone back to school — but not to teach biology and history. Knight’s pupils are equine and the subject is how to jump.

Such is her success that class numbers are high, often with a waiting list to join the fresh starters learning the basics or wayward pupils needing a refresher after a crisis of confidence.

her graduates will line up over the four days of the Festival including Nicky hendersontrained Pentland hills, second favourite for tomorrow’s Unibet Champion hurdle, and hughie Morrison’s Not So Sleepy, who also runs in day one’s big race.

henderson’s Palladium, prominent in the betting for the Boodles Juvenile handicap hurdle, and Warren Greatrex- trained emitom, one of the biggest threats to Paddy Power Stayers’ hurdle favourite Paisley Park, have also been to the Knight finishing school, just as Christian Williams-trained Potters Corner did a few days before he won the Welsh National in December.

Six years after the death of her partner, three-time champion jump jockey Terry Biddlecombe, 73- year- old Knight has been reinvigorated by her involvement in day-to-day racing. ‘I love seeing horses taught the right way and then watching them,’ she says.

‘We have a lot of horses come here who have made a lot of errors on a racecourse. They have to go back to the basics and get their confidence back. It is all about them enjoying it.

‘It’s six years ago that Terry died. For three years very little happened here. I wrote books because I like being occupied. Then I started filling the boxes again and jumping horses and it has just snowballed.

‘I get more pleasure seeing young horses jumping and helping horses which have had problems than anything else in racing.

‘We were lucky when we had Best Mate. he was an immaculate jumper. he never made a mistake and with him and (Queen Mother Champion Chase winner) edredon Bleu it is probably what won them their races at Cheltenham.

‘So many races can be won or lost through faulty jumping. If you can give a horse really strong foundations, if it knows that when it meets a fence wrong, or that when there are other horses around it, it can still manage to