BEN HAS ENGINEERED A WINNING OPERATION

Nick Townsend talks to trainer Ben Pauling who traded his spanner for a lunging rein and another way to succeed

Even as a schoolboy, Ben Pauling demonstrated he possessed an astute, analytical mind, and mastery of clearly-defined objectives when he secured Britain’s Young Engineer of the Year award.

These were talents that would serve him admirably in years to come.

And so it has proved.

Though that prize – the reward for his invention of a hay-binding device - led to him being offered a commission in the Royal Engineers and places to read engineering at three universities, instead he opted to study land management at Reading before preparing himself for his chosen career with the best education money couldn’t buy.

During his six-year stint as Nicky Henderson’s assistant, he oversaw such elite athletes as Long Run, Bobsworth, Sprinter Sacre, Binnocular, Punjabi, Riverside Theatre, and Finian’s Rainbow.

As much as all jumps-training careers are built on dreams, of welcoming in elite victors to the acclaim of the Cheltenham throng, of a Grand National triumph, of maybe, just maybe, developing a potential championship-winning stable, it has been apparent right from the start that this character’s aspirations have been engineered and constructed on the most solid of foundations.

From a rented yard near Boughton-on-the Water, where he launched his career, he and wife Sophie moved to Naunton Downs Golf Club in 2020 and have developed an operation, stabling well over 100 horses. Intriguingly, they have maintained a nine-hole course in a golf and gallops enterprise at their base a few miles east of Cheltenham racecourse.

We spoke five weeks before Cheltenham Festival as Pauling prepares to witness his five-year-old Handstands contest the Listed Sidney Banks Memorial Novices’ Hurdle at Huntingdon.