Cheltenham Gold Cup: Colin Tizzard nears peak at the top of the hill

It was a seven-mile walk to Butterwick Farm from Milborne Port, where his grandfather kept the Queen’s Head, so his parents used to meet halfway. “At Wizard’s Bridge,” Colin Tizzard grins. “For courting. Perhaps it isn’t exactly halfway. I’d say Father probably had to walk a bit farther.”

When they married, they lived in a caravan next to a couple of old barns rented from the manor house. The first two brothers were born there, Robert and then Colin. In time, a farmhouse was built. “But we were still the only boys in the school having free dinners,” Tizzard says.

Now, at 60, he stands every morning at the top of the hill opposite and gazes for miles into the swaying green heart of Dorset – and knows that nearly every blade of grass to the horizon is owned by one or other of the Tizzard brothers. Acre by acre, the squire sold the lot to his former tenants. “These days money’s cheap as chips, but I remember Father borrowing at 19 per cent,” Tizzard says. “We were young men, we all thought it was a waste of time, but he said: ‘Don’t worry, it’ll come down.’ And my brothers have been the same: they borrowed the money, they worked the land. I’m so proud of what they’ve done. I don’t like to hear people run farming down. If you’re good at it, you can make money. Yes, I got up at 4am for 25 years, but it’s a lovely way of earning a living.”

Robert went into property, but Michael has 2,000 head of cattle and Alan 1,000. “I’m lagging behind, with six or seven hundred,” Tizzard says. “But that’s because I’m messing around with these horses.” And here they come now: at first just shadows creeping out of the dim valley floor, gradually emerging, one mighty bound after another, as a series of steeplechasing archetypes, great brawny animals snorting wreaths of misty breath into the first sunbeams as their riders ease down at the top of the gallop. Two of them go to the Cheltenham Festival next week without a peer in the land, in their respective disciplines: Thistlecrack, rated by many the bet of the meeting in the World Hurdle; and Cue Card, the leading home candidate for the Cheltenham Gold Cup itself. Success for either would take a stable already fifth in the national prize-money table to still dizzier heights.

How proud the old man would be! He is never far from Tizzard’s thoughts, as Cue Card canters up the hill. Nor, in fact, is he ever far from Cue Card – buried, as he is, within 15 feet of the gallop. The field was so wet, the day of the funeral, that a tractor had to tow the coffin across from the church on a trailer. “He would have loved all this,” Tizzard says. “He was so chuffed when my son became first jockey to [champion trainer] Paul Nicholls, and in the last few years he would be up here as much as I was. He had a permit when I was young and riding point-to-pointers, but the cows always came first. Sometimes we wouldn’t get to ride the horses until night. But it’s a waste of money if you don’t do it properly.”

And that, by degrees, is just what he has ended up doing. In the first instance, 20 years ago, Tizzard likewise only dabbled with a couple of point-to-pointers to test the precocious talent of a son. “One cost three grand, the other two grand,” he remembers. “And in their first season they won four races each. Joe was champion novice at 16, and off on his moped every morning to Paul Nicholls.”

There were highs and lows for Joe with the man who has since won eight training titles, but one very literal high rubbed off: the famous hill at Ditcheat. It is widely assumed that Joe did not just pick up riding tips from Nicholls, and Tizzard does not demur. “Our gallop isn’t quite so steep, so we go a bit faster,” he says. A pause, a wry smile. “And, to be fair, I did advise Paul to move off hay and go on to haylage!”

Since Joe’s retirement from the saddle, Tizzard has raised his game afresh with a new stable block above the gallops on the site of an old byre. “We wanted to make a statement, I suppose,” he says. “We wanted to get away from people saying that we were just farmers training a few horses. Training’s a very fickle business, you’re either on the way up or the way down. And the horses have got to be a business, no less than farming’s a business.”

The horses’ bloom in their new environment this season is condensed by Cue Card, already a dual Festival winner and approaching the evening of his career, yet suddenly seeing out races with unprecedented gusto. His win in the King George VI Chase at Christmas, the second of three legs in a challenge put up by the Jockey Club, even makes him eligible for a £1m bonus should he win the Gold Cup. While at respectful pains to applaud the initiative, his trainer is plainly not giving the slightest thought to his share.

“Money will come, money will go,” he shrugs. “But to win a Gold Cup, that would stay with you for ever. The Gold Cup is why we do all this; why we go off and buy these ‘store’ horses. Of the 70 horses here, only two have ever run on the Flat. Of course, the easy route – if you can afford it – is to go and buy your horses ready-made out of France. You canter them up the gallop for a month and run them. But people are spending two, three, even four hundred grand on those. We bought Cue Card unbroken, and John and Heather [Snook] bought Thistlecrack unbroken, too. Cue Card’s dam ran in the Grand National, and Thistlecrack’s dam won a Midlands National. That’s what we like. People used to think that if you combine speed and stamina, you get a fast stayer, but I don’t think it works like that. I think you need a stayer on a stayer. A lot of our horses are lasting through to 11 years old, and that’s because they’re National Hunt-bred.”

Sure enough, while Thistlecrack has so far been confined to timber, Tizzard is already talking openly of aiming him at the Gold Cup as a novice chaser next season. Conceivably, that might even entail taking on his stablemate as defending champion. “Cue Card used to be so flamboyant, tearing off and then not really getting home,” Tizzard says. “And everyone who watches racing said we’d seen the best of the horse. But if you didn’t know his history, you’d look at him this season and say he’s an out-and-out staying chaser. And I’d say he’s a stone better round Cheltenham than Kempton. You can get a breather into them down the hill, straighten up, and then go again. Remember how he ran away with the Champion Bumper there, and the Ryanair Chase as well.”

Measured in mien and tone, standing squat and ruddy under his cap, Tizzard exudes the patience of a countryman even as he registers the breathless progress of his fortunes. “I find the training harder than the farming,” he admits. “You make a mistake, farming – well, you take the hit, and move on. It’s all down to you. With someone else’s horse, you’ve always got to explain the disappointments, got to explain if you balls things up.

“But in the West Country everyone knows Cue Card. All the rest of them in the Gold Cup, they’ve all got French names, haven’t they? I can’t go anywhere without people coming up and asking about the horse. He’s been on the go six years now, we’ve pushed him all the way, and he still loves it. They say that if he was trained by Paul, or Willie Mullins, Cue Card would be favourite. And that sums it up, really. We’re only just getting there, with these good horses, so let’s hope we don’t mess things up. But I’m so proud of the two horses, him and Thistlecrack. Whatever happens, it’s been brilliant.”