Sometime in the past Colin Tizzard was a cattle farmer with a couple of racehorses as a sideline, and whose most noteworthy brandishing accomplishment had gone ahead the cricket field.
How things have changed, and are possibly going to change further.
While Tizzard, 60, is still ready to loll in the memory of guaranteeing the wicket of unbelievable cricketer Sir Ian Botham when they played together as Somerset schoolboys, he currently wants to bowl over the resistance at the Cheltenham Festival with two of Britain’s greatest trusts against the assaulting Irish masses. The ever-mainstream Cue Card, as of now a two-time Festival champ, lines up as likely home most loved in the Gold Cup, while Thistlecrack is seen by some as the investor of the week as he hopes to make it four triumphs on the jog this season, in the World Hurdle.
What’s more, if Cue Card can add to his late restoration triumphs in Haydock’s Betfair Chase in November and in bounce racing’s Christmas highlight, the King George VI Chase at Kempton, he’ll be finishing the Jockey Club’s new steeple chasing Triple Crown, and gathering a £1m check for his inconveniences.
These are high-weight days for Tizzard, his wife Pauline, ex-jockey child Joe, little girl Kim and their 65-horse operation construct at the family cultivate with respect to the Dorset/Somerset fringe.
In any case, a wide grin spreads over his face when the subject of Botham arises during natural discourse. He said, “We’re in a fresh build now. There are no old, historic buildings and bugs, and I think he’s healthier. There’s good ventilation, high roofs and sunlight.
He ran twice after the epiglottis operation and didn’t do anything much, but is like a five or six-year-old now, he looks beautiful, and we’ve got a few older horses running better. We did the building because before we weren’t going anywhere, were we? We were having 35 winners a year, and winning £500,000, and I was chuffed with that. But with Joe coming home [retiring as a jockey] I just thought we ought to make a statement and move forward.
We needed the farm back anyway, as the horses had been taking a lot of the buildings and the cattle were pushed out everywhere, and now we have them in one place and the horses in another. It’s my dream. I’ve got a proper training establishment now; I’m not just a farmer playing about.”
