CHANNON JUNIOR READY TO SCORE

Nick Townsend speaks to a young trainer with some very big boots to fill

A sense of grandeur, of majesty – in both senses of the word – can’t help but envelope you as you arrive at West Ilsley Stables, a name long associated with some of racing’s most esteemed individuals, human and equine.

Today the clattering of hooves you hear are those of Jack Channon’s string returning from their work. Yet, you are all too conscious that it was on these gallops that some of racing’s pre-eminent performers emerged under the charge of the maestro, four-time champion trainer Major Dick Hern.

It prompts an intriguing question for the 29-year-old Channon, still in the early months of his training career and striving to prosper in his own right rather than as ‘Mick’s Boy’ – his inevitable epithet – having taken over Channon Snr’s licence at the start of the year: is he is burdened by such a weight of history or inspired by it?

He laughs self-deprecatingly. “I’ve got no excuses, have I? Brigadier Gerard, Nashwan and Dayjur were trained here. So, I can’t say this isn’t the right place to train! You look back at those greats and, if anything, it spurs me on to want to replicate that.”

He could have added Bustino, Henbit and Troy to the horses who were also amongst the litany of Classic winners that Hern sent out between 1963 to 1989 from this gloriously-appointed establishment, set among 63 acres, and which was once owned by The Queen. She purchased the stables in 1982 from the sale of her Height of Fashion, the multiple Group winner, to Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum. Channon Snr bought West Ilsley from The Queen in 1999.