Meet Lambourn’s ‘most terrifying’ trainer
When you drive up the hill past the Ridgeway from Ashbury, the sweeping Berkshire Downs open up in front of you. But before you enter the Valley of the Racehorse, you pass Ashdown House. The 1st Earl of Craven built it in the 1660s for the ‘Winter Queen’, Charles I’s eldest sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, but she died of pneumonia before she could move in. This tragic masterpiece is my metaphor for the two decades I spent in Lambourn. The sun was shining on the grand Dutch-style hunting lodge last week as I re-trod the path I first took 45 years ago. Jamie Osborne now trains in the yard where Nick Gaselee mentored the King during his short race career, so it seems appropriate that Jamie is coaching amateur jockey and Sunday Times royal correspondent, Roya Nikkhah.
