The Career Of Trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies
Nigel Twiston-Davies has just experienced his quietest September since 2006, having out of 39 runners, just four winners. This is unusual for the trainer whose farm in 2007/08 welcomed home 87 winners.
Nigel, born in May 1957 rode as an amateur for 6 years for trainers which include 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 1200 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! 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. Whilst he has had but moderate success at the Cheltenham Festival, winning only 6 races during his career, but he has won quite a few of the most significant races at the Aintree Festival such as the Aintree Hurdle and the Sefton Novices’ Hurdle.
Twiston-Davies apparently did think about retiring before he won the 2002 Grand National, which would be enough to make anyone have a rethink!
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 jockey of choice 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 – sounds somewhat familiar doesn’t it? In July, the pair announced a new initiative that will see the two of them going into partnership at the Naunton base, which coincides with the opening of a new 52 box barn facility. The long-term patron of the yard at Grange Hill Farm, Raymond Mould, a racehorse and property tycoon and the owner of Bindaree, the Grand National winner, has particularly welcomed the new scheme.
So will this prestigious pair be able to outrun the Irish contingent who are currently providing remarkable waves of speed, agility and stamina?
