Nigel Twiston-Davies

Nigel Twiston-Davies was born in May 1957 and rode as an amateur for six years for trainers which included Fred Winter, Kim Bailey, Richard Head and Fred Rimell. In 1981 he moved to the Cotswolds to begin his training, and in 1982 had his first winner with Last of the Foxes in 1982 at Hereford Racecourse – it was an even bigger feat when you consider that he also rode Last of the Foxes in the race! This was when Twiston-Davies started concentrating on developing his own stable.

That was just the beginning for Twiston-Davies who is now a successful national hunt trainer, having taken out his full licence in 1989, and having his first fully licensed winner with Babil on 30th December of the same year. Since then he has trained over 1400 winners of a diverse range of races including a number of national hunt racing’s most important festivals and races – the Grand National, the Welsh National, the Cheltenham Festival, the Hennessey Gold Cup, the Sussex National and the Becher Chase to name just a handful of them!

Nigel’s stables are Grange Hill Farm at Naunton in Gloucestershire. It has a four furlong all weather uphill gallop with extensive schooling fences, an out door school swimming pool, grass gallops and two horse walkers. His training partner is Carl Llewellyn, with whom he has shared many victories over the eighteen years that they had been working together as trainer/jockey. In fact the two recently ‘got back together’ as Llewellyn had taken time away from Grange Hill Farm to take out a trainer’s licence, which he began with a dramatic start by winning the Scottish Grand National on a horse he rode himself.

The definitive moment of Twiston-Davies’ career came in 1998 when he won the Grand National for the first time with Earth Summit, and the next big moment came in 2002 when he won it again with Bindaree.

2010 ended his previously moderate success at the Cheltenham Festival, when Imperial Commander won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and immediately after that his son, Sam Twiston-Davies went out and won the the Cheltenham Foxhunters 2010 on Baby Run.

Nigel was National Hunt Trainer of the Year for 2010.