IRISH ARE TAKING OVER THE ASYLUM

Nick Townsend consults the turf's top doc, Dr Richard Newland, about the ills afflicting British jumps racing

- Nick Townsend

It’s nigh on a decade since Pineau’s De Re mastery of the Grand National fences saw his trainer Dr Richard Newland, a character as equally at home with a stethoscope as legging up a jockey into their saddle, hoisted aloft in the Aintree winner’s enclosure after the 11-year-old’s 25-1 triumph.

Though, in the aftermath he had vowed that his then dozen horses was “manageable” for an individual then running a 350-staff healthcare business, protesting that he trained horses “just for the fun of it” there was a strong suspicion that this adroit man of many parts harboured ambitions well beyond that of a hobbyist.

So, it has proved. In the intervening years Newland and his wife Laura, mother of their three daughters - and “very involved, she manages the whole estate - things I’m not very good at. If a fence needs repairing, she sorts all that out – and added another yard to the existing stables.”

Today, not far short of 100 charges are in residence at Newland’s Urloxhey Stables, in Worcestershire. The majority are jumpers, but significantly that total includes 30 Flat horses, with 20 of those juveniles being primed to run this season. 

To facilitate that development, he has developed a dual-purpose operation run in conjunction with Jamie Insole, for the past five years assistant to Charlie Hills, who now shares the training licence with him.

However, it must be stressed that, after recording 598 successes over jumps, including the Coral Cup with Burntoakboy at Cheltenham Festival in 2007, Newland’s move into Flat racing is not purely the consequence of a desire for a new challenge.