NICKY Henderson may have reached the age when others could be checking their pension plans, but his plans still revolve around early starts, horses and winning races.
The champion trainer is riding on the crest of the sort of wave normally seen off the coast of California, having reached the 3000-winner mark in July, and still walks into his yard at Seven Barrows each morning with almost boyish enthusiasm at a time when most of us are claiming the extra half hour in bed.
“I definitely still enjoy it as much as ever,” he said, as if the suggestion that that the allure of the job might have waned was bordering on heresy. “We’re so lucky to have a lot of very good horses and that’s what keeps you going.”
What got Henderson started, 40 years ago today, was a horse called Dukery in a novice hurdle at Uttoxeter.
With the ink still barely dry on his trainer’s licence, Dukery was just Henderson’s third runner,and one of three sent to him by Ron Scott, a jeweller from Skegness, who had bought Dukery and three other horses six weeks before from Irish trainer Mick O’Toole.
The day had not started well with Scott missing the race as he was dealing with the aftermath of a burglary at his shop and Henderson set off with the same nerves that still trouble him today.
Dukery, ridden by Bob Davies, took the lead two out and beat All Amber by 10 lengths but Henderson still bore the look of a man just reprieved from the gallows as he admitted from the sanctuary of the winner’s enclosure: “I was a nervous wreck before the horse reached the first hurdle,” he said.
Henderson has faced and jumped every hurdle placed before him since, always in the company of Albert “Corky” Browne, whom Henderson first met when he was assistant trainer to Fred Winter.
When Henderson elected to start on his own Browne was the first signing as head man.
“He’s been here from day one and with me every step of the way,” he said. “He’s an integral part of our team.”
The team of horses that Henderson trains has changed from the 22 he started with to the 50 when he was first champion in the 1980s to treble that now and he has also had to adapt to the evolution of jump racing.
“The whole thing’s changed dramatically – training techniques and how we do it all,” he said. “You grow with the times because the new guys are coming in with all sorts of trendy new theories that they’ve picked up from around the world.”
The one aspect of the life that never changes is the gut-wrenching moment when horses are killed on the track. Henderson found that out in 1984 when he went to the Triumph Hurdle with two fancied runners. See You Then, who had just arrived from Ireland, was the favourite but Henderson’s eyes rarely left Childown, the horse he felt could be a star. That dream died along with the horse when he broke a leg at the second hurdle.
“I was down with Childown and when See You Then passed me [on the second circuit] I thought he’d won,” Henderson recalled years later. “When someone said he hadn’t I couldn’t have cared less.
“It just doesn’t get any easier. You know it’s going to happen and it’s the tough part that you have to live with.”
Something else that Henderson has had to live with is still not winning a Grand National.
Six months after Dukery’s victory, Zongalero was upsides Rubstic landing over the last at Aintree but was then outstayed on the long run-in. And that is not only the closest that Henderson has got to winning the Grand National –The Tsarevich also finished runner-up in 1987 – but any of the 20 or so races bearing that name across Britain.
“And we’re still trying,” he said with a chuckle. “But we’re haven’t given up hope yet.”
And no sign of being pensioned off.
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