At the time of writing, Tom George lies
in a highly respectable eighth place in the National Hunt Trainers’
Championship, having saddled 41 winners and amassed over £642,000 in
total prize money. However, as Adrian Heskin said, when replacing
Paddy Brennan as stable jockey to George at the start of the 2016/17
season, “Tom has a lot of young horses. He’s invested a lot of
money over the past year, so he has a lot of novices coming through.
There are a couple of really exciting ones that could be anything.”
Having worked with Arthur Moore, Gavin
Pritchard-Gordon, the late Michael Jarvis, Francois Doumen and Martin
Pipe before becoming a trainer in his own right, George saddled his
first winner, Newton Point, at Worcester in 1993. Since then he has
sent out over 500 winners from his training establishment Down Farm
in Slad, near Stroud, Gloucester.
His first winner at the Cheltenham
Festival was Galileo – who was one of a crop of horses imported
from Poland – in the Ballymore Properties Novices’ Hurdle in
2002. George said at the time, “This is the sort of day everybody
dreams about”. He also enjoyed success with the front-running grey,
Nacarat, whose exploits at Kempton, in particular, he believes helped
to raise his profile. Nacarat won what is now the Betbright Chase at
the Sunley-on-Thames track as an 8-year-old in 2009 and again, as an
11-year-old, in 2012.
Other notable horses from the yard
include Saint Are, who finished second, behind Many Clouds, in the
Grand National in 2015 and fourth, behind One For Arthur, in 2017.
The 12-year-old is being trained for the great race once again this
season but, because of a change in the rules by the British
Horseracing Authority (BHA), will not be going hunter chasing
beforehand, as was originally planned.
In terms of prospects for the
Cheltenham Festival in 2018, George is likely to send Summerville
Boy, winner of the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown in January, straight to
the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, for which the 6-year-old is a
top-priced 20/1. He has also expressed himself satisfied with the
performance of The Worlds End, who has yet to trouble the judge in
three starts on unsuitably soft going, and is hopeful of an improved
performance in the Stayers’ Hurdle, for which the gelding is a 25/1
chance, in places.
