One of the biggest stories of the early jumps season was the decision of Alan Potts to move his horses away from Henry de Bromhead, who was the man originally tasked with taking the typically blunt Yorkshireman into the big league of racehorse ownership. De Bromhead was just breaking through himself when Potts telephoned with a view to buying a horse called Oscar India, who had earned rave reviews for winning a point-to-point for the trainer, and while that deal fell through, Potts was impressed enough by the handler’s honesty, and soon decided to buy a job lot on de Bromhead’s say so.

One of those horses was Sizing Europe, who brought both heartache and joy for his new connections: heartache when going wrong jumping the penultimate flight of the 2009 Champion Hurdle just as victory seemed assured, but overtaken by joy when he made amends by taking the Arkle in 2010 and the Queen Mother Champion Chase the following year. Potts and de Bromhead enjoyed some great days together, with Sizing Australia adding further Festival glory in the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase, but like most self-made sons of “God’s own country”, the owner always maintained that those he chose to do his work had to be successful on his terms. The partnership continued to churn out winners, but not at Cheltenham in March, and the conspicuous success of Colin Tizzard saw Potts move most of his racing operation to south Somerset instead. Sizing John joined Jessica Harrington and recently won the Irish Gold Cup.

Alan Potts made his money in mining, initially as a teenager down the pits, but latterly through a company called Mining Machinery Developments, which designs and makes equipment for use in the mining and quarrying industries. MMD’s big breakthrough was a machine which ensured that material quarried was of a regular size for safety and ease of passage on conveyor belts; so was the Sizing Machine born, and many of Potts’ best horses have had the prefix Sizing as a result.

The business made Potts a millionaire many times over, and after retirement he got involved in racehorse ownership. As a plain-speaking man, it’s no surprise that he turned to Sue and Harvey Smith, although his first venture to the Cheltenham Festival came in the Christies Foxhunter with Omni Cosmo Touch, who was a former Smith horse trained by Joss Saville.

Under Niall Saville, he looked reluctant to go to the first fence, and unseated his rider well before halfway, but he didn’t deter his owner from further participation.

Potts retains his desire to be a big player, and as well as the talent which crossed the water to Tizzard, he has been keen to add to his stable strength, buying Champion Chase contender Fox Norton and exciting novice hurdler Finian’s Oscar for big money in the autumn.

Those two have already won graded races to justify the decision, and while the pressure is on Tizzard to end his owner’s Festival drought at the first time of asking, the soft-spoken cattle man has broad enough shoulders for the task in hand. J