MAKES THE SWITCH FROM GOALS TO THE GALLOPS AS HE PREPARES TO RACE FOR CHARITY AT ASCOT
n racing circles, Michael Owen is best known as the enthusiastic owner-breeder of Irish St. Leger winner Brown Panther. His passion for the sport has seen him go further than the majority of other owners by investing in his own Cheshire yard, Manor House Stables. His hands-on involvement at Manor House, where Tom Dascombe is the trainer, is more to do with looking after the other owners than physically helping with the horses. But on November 24 the former England footballer — whose journeys took him from Liverpool to Real Madrid, Newcastle and Manchester United — will take his participation to another level when he makes his racecourse debut as a jockey in a charity race at Ascot in aid of the Prince’s Countryside Fund.
“When I retired from football I thought I’d do the odd thing for charity,” he said, explaining why he had undertaken the challenge. “I raised £75,000 doing the London Marathon.
“The team said it was about time I did another fund-raiser. Everyone assumes I ride because I own a yard but the only time I’d ever sat on a pony was aged eight on a holiday to Ibiza.”
Everyone can kick a ball in much the same way that everyone can sit on a horse but not everyone can dribble it around several Argentine defenders and the goalkeeper in a World Cup quarter-final, as Owen famously did as an 18 year-old in 1998.
And, as Owen soon found out, sitting on a horse is one