SNOWDEN IS FAST BECOMING TRAINING ROYALTY

Nick Townsend speaks to a handler who has enjoyed success in and out of the saddle

- Nick Townsend

It was, by any estimation, a "surreal" moment in Jamie Snowden's 44 years, and quite possibly a defining one too when on a March evening in 2002 he was summoned from guardroom duty to the Commandant's office at Sandhurst where he was undergoing officer training.

"I thought I'd done something incredibly wrong," he recalls. "I put my heels together and saluted. But the commandant said: 'Snowden, you can ride horses, can't you?' The character who had participated in Pony Club events and ridden in point-to-points since the age of 16, unhesitatingly responded in the affirmative. "The Commandant told me: 'You're riding in the 3.30 at Sandown tomorrow"." Snowden continues: "The Commandant was in the Royal Irish Regiment and his regiment had leased a horse to run in the Grand Military Gold Cup (an annual three mile steeplechase confined to currently serving military amateur riders) the following day. Their jockey was Lucy Horner, who was in the Royal Irish Regiment, but she was out in Northern Ireland and there was a mortar attack on her base and she couldn't get back for the race. So, I turned up as a last minute-sub." The trainer recollects that, as he clambered into the Commandant's car to head for Sandown "the rest of my platoon were going into gas chamber training." They did so unaware that he would be partnering a 14-1 shot called named Folly Road to victory in the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown Park.

He adds: "Afterwards we got taken off for drinks with The Queen and The Queen Mother at Windsor Royal Lodge and then back to Sandhurst that evening in the Commandant's car. The rest of my platoon were just coming out of the gas chamber, coughing and spluttering, and eyes streaming, and feeling pretty miserable about life.