COLIN Tizzard has often been characterised as a dairy farmer who dabbles in training horses, and while that description does him a huge disservice, it was once quite true; when son Joe was a promising teenage amateur, Tizzard took up training to provide him with opportunities, only to find that he had something of a knack with a staying chaser, and soon he was getting enquiries from family and friends who wanted a horse in training.

Tizzard upgraded to a full licence and enjoyed great success with Joe Lively for lifelong friend Richard Dimond, who won seven chases as a novice, including the Grade 1 Feltham (now the Kauto Star) at Kempton. The milking still came first, however.

MILKING

The milking still came first when Cue Card carried the standard for the Venn Farm operation, winning nine Grade 1 races in a long career which included wins in the King George, the Ryanair, and three Betfair Chases, but moving the horses to a purpose-built yard at Spurle Farm, just a few furlongs away, sent a signal that the horses might be taking precedence.

Two Grade 1 Cheltenham Festival wins in March included the Gold Cup that Colin had dreamed of since watching The Dikler overhaul Pendil on his first visit to Cheltenham as a teenager in 1973.

Like The Dikler, his Gold Cup hero Native River was something of an ugly duckling (“There he was, big white face and four white feet. In the old days I’d have just walked away, but you’re never sure where the next good one will come from, and I took a chance”), but he belied his unfashionable looks to outbattle Might Bite in a titanic battle for chasing’s blue riband, and achieved his trainer’s dream.

“When we started racing, the farm was subsidising my racing habit,” he said. “But in the past few years, the horses have subsidised the farm.”

Tizzard was born at Venn Farm and his father initially kept a couple of Friesians which grew into a dairy empire over a period of sixty years.

HERD SOLD

In November, the farm’s dairy herd was shipped out in its entirety, all 288 head of them, and sold at auction, making Colin Tizzard a racehorse trainer first and foremost.

To underline the point, he saddled three horses for the Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury a couple of weeks later – they finished first, second and fifth in one of the season’s most prestigious handicap chases.

It looks like Tizzard might make a go of his new career.