YOU’RE DING!
THEY are a family united by racing but with divided loyalties when it comes to the outcome of this afternoon’s Crabbie’s Grand National.
And stuck in the middle is Karen Bowen…. playing the role of both mum and wife but not sure which side of her family to cheer most.
Husband Peter, second with McElvey in 2007 and regarded as one of the most hard-working trainers on the circuit, has prepared Al Co — winner of last year’s Scottish National — this time.
If his gelding wins, it would be the first National success for a Welsh- trained runner since Kirkland in 1905.
Potentially standing in his way is 17-year-old son Sean, one of the riding finds of the season. He rides 50-1 shot Mon Parrain for his boss, champion trainer Paul Nicholls.
Success for his mount would make Bowen, who will be 18 in September, the second youngest jockey to win the race after Bruce Hobbs, who was 17 years and three months old when partnering Battleship to victory in 1938.
Making Sean’s story even more remarkable is the fact that up to the age of seven he was so allergic to horses even contact with the stray hairs on his parents’ clothes gave him chronic eczema.
His mother, herself a former champion point-to-point rider who also rode against the likes of Peter Scudamore and Richard Dunwoody, said: ‘It was always worse through clipping time with all the hair flying everywhere.
‘He was quite bad and not nice to see with all the scratching. It was only him — my other two sons never had a thing.
‘Not surprisingly, it put him off horses at the time but at seven it suddenly went away.
‘The doctors had no explanation. They had said he would never grow out of it. Thank God they were wrong.’
It was a turning point in Sean’s life and horses suddenly turned from a problem to a passion.
He even left school at 14 to continue his education at home in between riding the family’s horses such became his desire to become a professional jockey.
His mother added: ‘ Once he started riding regularly all he wanted to do was be a jockey. That is all he did every day and he spent hours watching the top jockeys on the television. ‘ When he wasn’t watching racing he had a PlayStation game called G1 Champion Jockey which told you how a horse had to be ridden. It was like a jockey getting instructions in the paddock. ‘He always beat anyone else who played the game because he was so good at it.
‘I also had to loan out his s poor old pony Striker,r, because r-the boys were wearing n him out, up and down the gallops practising their finishes.’
The boys are brothers Mickey, 19, and James, 14. A head injury now prevents Mickey from race riding but he is assistant trainer to his father as well as training his own string of point-to-pointers.
His horse Bobs Law was seventh in the Fox Hunters’ Chase over the famous
Sean, 17, out to beat his trainer Dad on a 50-1 shot
1998 THE last Welsh jockey to win the Grand National — Carl Llewellyn on Earth Summit — was in 1998, the year Sean Bowen was born
Aintree fences. James has jockey aspirations and has already ridden 60 winners on the Pony Racing circuit.
As toddlers, the Bowens’ base near Haverfordwest meant the boys became familiar sights on track as they almost lived in the horsebox at busy times of the season.
Sean was only 10 days old when he first went racing, although the 350-mile trip to Market Rasen turned into a nightmare for Karen. She recalled: ‘All the boys went within days because it was our life. We had a lorry with living space.
‘They had TV in there and spent hours in that lorry. Peter had had a fall on the gallops so there was no-one else to take the horses to Market Rasen. Sean was only 10 days old.
‘From the second Mickey was in the box, he would be asleep and I just assumed every baby was the same until I had Sean.
‘He was hungry all the time and made his feelings known. I had to keep pulling up in lay-bys or service stations to breastfeed him.’