Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Dairy-farming days are over as Tizzards focus on their superstars
Opposition racing trainers should look the other way now, writes Richard Bache , for Gold Cup winner Colin Tizzard is going full-time
WHEN Native River outlasted Might Bite up Cheltenham’s famous hill to win the Gold Cup in March it garnered almost as many headlines in Farmers’ Weekly as it did in the Racing Post.
For winning trainer Colin Tizzard has combined building his enviable string of top-class horses with running the family’s dairy farm on the Somerset and Dorset border.
But as of last Tuesday, getting up at the crack of dawn for milking is a thing of the past for the Tizzard family (Colin, wife Pauline and their children Joe and Kim, who are both assistant trainers).
After 60 years of dairying at Venn Farm, in the lush countryside near Milborne Port, the family had put their herd of cattle up for sale.
The 246-strong herd was transported to Sedgemoor Auction Centre where it fetched about £250,000 at one of the biggest disposals of the year.
And while it is clearly too early to judge if having a little more time on their hands to focus on racing will pay dividends on the course, the initial signs are pretty good, to say the least.
As after having the opportunity to perhaps enjoy the luxury of a relatively long lie-in on Wednesday morning, Tizzard landed a 200-1 four-timer at Exeter that very afternoon, with Russian Hawk, Norse Legend, The Russian Doyen and Watcombe Heights landing their respective races at the Devon track.
The prize money should certainly have replaced a few days of dairy income anyway...
The rationale for the dairy herd sale was that as the Tizzards’ racing operation has expanded into one of the country’s biggest and most successful, investment on the dairy farm had not kept pace.
Mr Tizzard said an estimated £750,000 was needed to update it.
He told the Telegraph: “It is a business decision. We’ve invested in the racing yard at Spurles Farm but haven’t done so much at Venn. To attract decent staff we’d need a new parlour, drains and you’d be looking at a £750,000 investment.”
Cattle won’t entirely disappear from the landscape though, as the family will be getting into rearing beef.
That is, as Tizzard however quipped, a “part-time job” compared to dairy, leaving more time to focus on his fearsome arsenal of equine superstars.
Today there are more than 120 horses stabled at the yard, including Gold Cup winner Native River, Thistlecrack and Fox Norton.
To reach the point where he trains such exceptional horses has been a 20-year journey for Tizzard.
He took out a full licence in 1998, having initially started training point-to-point horses when son Joe began his career as a jockey.
And such has been his aptitude for the demanding job, he has earned the respect of punters and rival yards on both sides of the Irish Sea.
In many ways, Tizzard might be viewed as one of the last of his type, combining training racehorses with the demanding job of running a farm.
The increasing professionalism of the sport since Martin Pipe heralded a new era by dominating with “fitter” horses in the 1980s and 1990s has seen the top horses largely trained at a few elite yards.
For outsiders to crack into that top echelon of Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson in Britain and Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott in
Ireland is ever more difficult, making Tizzard’s ascent all the more remarkable.
For a newspaper that is rooted in the countryside like the Western Daily Press, it is hard to imagine many better sporting headlines than “Dairy farmer wins Gold Cup”.
It is almost as hard to imagine it being one we’d be able to run again any time soon, now that the Tizzards no longer quite fit the criteria.
While National Hunt racing retains its common touch and still throws up far more surprises than on the Flat, there is an increasing trend towards the biggest yards, bankrolled by super-wealthy owners,
This genuine dispersal sale will prove to be a sad day for the Tizzards, who are renowned dairy farmers in the area. The sort of investment required to update the current buildings and parlour at a time when the family needs to be fully committed to the racehorse training business has forced the decision upon them AUCTIONEER GREENSLADE TAYLOR HUNT
dominating. The sport though is richer for characters like Tizzard upsetting the odds every now and again.
Indeed, he has in the past credited the success of the dairy farm, founded by his father Leslie 60 years ago, for allowing him to grow the racing business so successfully.
It will undoubtedly have been a wrench to dispose of the herd.
Ahead of the sale, auctioneer Greenslade Taylor Hunt said: “This genuine dispersal sale will prove to be a sad day for the Tizzards, who are renowned dairy farmers in the area.
“The sort of investment required to update the current buildings and parlour at a time when the family needs to be fully committed to the racehorse training business has forced the decision upon them.
“With very few sales of this type scheduled before the end of 2018, this is an ideal opportunity for potential purchasers to source replacements.”
And buyers certainly took the opportunity to buy the herd, coming from as far afield as Essex, Cornwall, Carmarthen and Cheshire.
A total of 39 farmers ended up acquiring cattle, at an average price of £1,011 per head.
It was, however, West Country buyers who dug deepest, with a top price of more than £2,000 being paid by a Dorchester farmer for one prized animal.
That is, of course, pocket change compared to the cost of buying a top-grade racehorse.
More and more of the horses at the Tizzard yard fit that description today.
As horses like Cue Card became a household name and favourite of armchair punters over the past decade the racing business has grown at a rapid rate, as more owners trusted the Tizzards with their top horses.
Now he has a team equipped to do battle with the likes of Somersetbased Nicholls, Henderson and the major Irish players.
The yard has started the season in red-hot form and the stable superstars such as Native River, Thistlecrack and Kilbricken House will be targeted at the major honours at Cheltenham, Aintree and Ascot.
The glamour of those biggest festivals is quite the contrast with milking cows.
Yet if observers look hard enough there are similarities to find between training race horses and dairy farming.
Both are, to put it mildly, bloody hard work. And they have their ups and downs.
The glass-half empty demeanour of the stereotypical trainer and dairy farmer can probably be attributed to the fact that even the most successful trainer saddles more losers than winners and the fluctuation in the milk price seems to swing downwards more often than it does upwards.
They also boast their own unique – and to outsiders at least – bafflingly delightful vernaculars. Auctioneer Greenslade Taylor Hunt’s report of the dairy herd’s sale described it thus: “The 221 milking and dry cows forward on the day sold to 2000gns for the fresh second calver by ‘Schillview Garrett’ and the October calved heifer by ‘Ardnasalem Bookem Pride’ both purchased by DW Ford of Tincelton, Dorchester.
“The same purchaser paid 1850gns for a second lactation September calved cow and the fresh third calver ‘Weaver Hazel 135th’.
“Other calved heifers sold to 1850gns for a ‘Morningview Legend’ daughter to join a consignment of 30 that travelled to Herefordshire.”
It’s enough to make a detailed form guide for the Grand National almost look crystal clear...
One thing is clear though, the Tizzard yard goes from strength to strength and looks in fine shape to mount a challenge for the biggest prizes this season.