EXPECTATIONS SOAR AT RIDGE

Nick Townsend talks to rising Newmarket training star James Owen

- Nick Townsend

An air of expectation pervades Green Ridge Stables in Newmarket's Hamilton Road. It does not surprise you. And this is even before East India Dock and Burdett Road justify such anticipation at Cheltenham's November meeting and epitomise the yard's meteoric rise to prominence.

A touch over-hyped? Well, as I write this, the upwardly mobile James Owen stands sixth in the jump trainers' leaderboard, ahead of such distinguished names as Donald McCain and Jonjo and AJ O'Neill. Oh, and he has a Group winner on the Flat to his name, too.

Yet, remarkably, up until two years ago, he wasn't even a licenced trainer.

What this astute, equable, multi-faceted character can boast, however, is a prodigious reputation in other associated fields. The 45-yearold has been a successful trainer and rider of Arabian horses - being five-times champion trainer. He has trained point-to-pointers and won over 130 races riding them.

And, perhaps most intriguingly, he has also established a highly successful pre-training operation in which, like pupils at a prep school, yearlings are broken in and prepared for their training regimes ahead under the likes of William Haggas, Sir Michael Stoute, George Boughey and James Fanshawe. Horses that have passed through Green Ridge include Stoute's 2022 Derby winner Desert Crown.

When Owen did begin his training career in late 2022 it was in decidedly modest fashion "I was actually on holiday with my wife Jenny (anequine vet), and I said 'I'm going to have a go at training. I'm going to licence ten stables and see how we get on.' I bought a few horses myself, only jumpers, and said 'we'll keep it National Hunt' and it won't affect the pre-trainers."