BIG INTERVIEW
Nick Townsend talks to Richard Hobson about Lord du Mesnil
What’s a trainer to do when one of his charges is still seeking a first victory after umpteen races here and in France, has fallen on four occasions in the process, and even had the mother of a jockey pleading with him not to put her boy in the saddle again. Oh, and his owner wants out?
When, two years ago, Richard Hobson was confronted with that scenario, he had no doubts that he should maintain his faith in the French-bred chaser Lord Du Mesnil.
How prescient that decision has proved to be as he prepares the eightyear-old to contest the Randox Grand National, following the horse’s game triumph in the William Hill Grand National Trial at Haydock in February – the most recent of four victories in a remarkable transformation of fortunes.
“He’d never won, and didn’t know how to win,” former jockey Hobson recalls of the horse who had arrived at his small but thriving operation at the delightfully-named Bobble Barn Farm in the Cotswolds in March 2019, having been bought out of Dominique Bressou’s stable in France.
He adds: “I ran him quickly (in October, 2019) at Uttoxeter. He fell at the open ditch (6th), with James Bowen (the 2018 champion conditional rider) on. His owner wanted to get him out again quickly. There was a race at Aintree, so I told his owner we’d school him, to make sure his jumping was OK.”
At Aintree, he unseated the jockey (again Bowen) at the third. “It was all doom and gloom,” says Hobson. “The horse’s confidence was shot. And, as for James Bowen, his mother came on the phone to me and said: ‘I know you’ve been very good to my son, but please could you do me a favour and never put him on that horse again!’ I was driving home from Aintree, thinking this isn’t great – but knowing that I still had a very nice horse in my hands.”
He adds: “I phoned the owner, and he said, ‘This is just a disaster. This isn’t the horse I thought we’d bought.’
“I said: ‘Let’s be a bit patient with him, let him acclimatise, let him settle in. He needs to get used to the English regime. Can we run him over hurdles?’ He agreed.”
Lord Du Mesnil raced six times over hurdles, without mishap, and was
placed, but victory still eluded him. “The owner said he didn’t want to be in the horse any more – but I wanted to keep him, and sold him to Paul Porter (who was joined in the venture by Mike and Mandy Smith). He’s the landlord of my local pub, the Fox Inn, in Barrington I think one or two of his friends may have been saying ‘this horse is a donkey - you don’t want to be buying this’. But how wrong have they been proven?”
Hobson’s adds: “At one time it looked like I was going to have to buy him myself.” He pauses before adding: “I probably should have. After he won the Tommy Whittle (Handicap Chase, in late December, 2019 – the first of three successive victories in just over a month), we got offered a huge amount of money by several different people. I could have cashed in.”
Even under new ownership, the drama was far from over for Lord Du Mesnil. “At Newcastle, in a hurdle race, he finished third, but struck into his fetlock quite badly and it got infected,” says Hobson. “I took him to the vets the next morning, and they had to drain his joint. They wanted to keep him in, and do it again and again. But after 24 hours, I brought him home, and put him on the best part of four bottles of penicillin and stabled him for a month. He came right. But it was 50-50 at one stage.”
But why his commitment to this seemingly lost cause? “He’s got a lovely pedigree, and has an engine,” says Hobson, who is an astute judge on the former quality – being also a successful bloodstock agent, specialising in French-bred horses. “It’s a complete confidence thing with him. He’d never won. More importantly, the jockeys were telling me he needed 2½ miles, but I kept scratching my head, looked at his pedigree, and thinking ‘this horse will stay longer than the mother-in-law’.”
It was an astute verdict. The horse has twice won at an extended 3m 4f under conditional jockey Paul O’Brien, with whom he has developed a fine rapport.
Hobson says of the young rider who will partner him at Aintree: “He started riding out for us two years ago as a claiming jockey and is a beautiful horseman, very good hands, very good over an obstacle. The two of them get on very well.”
Lord Du Mesnil’s Haydock Trial triumph was a poignant moment for the 43-year-old trainer whose father Russell, a former trainer, had died two weeks previously, at his home in France, at the age of 84.
Hobson Jnr went to school in France and spent his formative years there before beginning a 14-year career as “journeyman” jockey, riding winners in England, France, Italy and the US.
“When I retired (in 2009), I’d always been interested in buying and selling horses, the bloodlines and French pedigrees in particular. That’s the route I took,” explains a character who has bought over 100 graded winners, including the supreme hurdler Hurricane Fly, winner of 22 Grade 1s.
In 2014, Hobson established his training yard, together with his assistant and partner Shirley Becker, the mother of their three children. Jointly, they possess an impressive level of expertise. Shirley’s parents had a racing stables in Germany and she rode successfully as an amateur jockey in Germany.
The partnership has swiftly produced dividends. Last season, their 20-horse yard produced 13 winners from 49 runners – an admirable win strike rate of 27 per cent. In addition, the stable’s Shantou Flyer (now with Paul Nicholls) and Lord Du Mesil were both second, in the Foxhunters and the amateur riders’ novices’ chase respectively, at last year’s Cheltenham Festival.
The bloodstock side of their business admirably complements the training operation. “We’re not expensive in fees,” says Hobson. “And really, we couldn’t do it without the bloodstock side of things. When I started off, I owned most of the yard myself, certainly 50 per cent. But we’ve got one or two owners now who’ve got several horses with us. The Boom Syndicate run by Gordon Farr, have got four horses with us, and are massive supporters of the yard.”
Some horses Hobson buys and sells on while others stay in the yard, though he admits: “They’re all for sale and, to be honest, the ones I end up keeping are the ones I can’t sell. Then your only option is to go to the course (and run them), but that sometimes works out well.”
Away from racing, it has been a stressful year. “I had Covid quite badly, and I was very poorly for some time, from last April onwards,” Hobson says. “Shirley was heavily pregnant with twins at the time. I’m still not 100 per cent. Where I could run the best part of a couple of miles, now I can hardly run 100m before being out of breath.” In addition, he and Shirley had to postpone their wedding, but hope that will be possible this year, restrictions permitting.
But before that, an important date at Aintree. “I’m completely relaxed about the whole thing. As I’ve said all along, he’s a horse that needs soft ground. If he gets that, he’ll be a major player at the end of the race.”
Needing little encouragement to praise the Lord, he adds: “The horse has won nearly £140,000 in just over 12 months and shot up the ranks (handicap ratings) from 115 to 154 at his best. The horse has done more than we could ever imagined and hoped for. I look at it as an achievement of its own, to have come from where he was to where he is now. We’ll have him tip-top fit and ready to run the race of his life on April 10. But whatever he does from now to the end of his career is just a bonus really.”