H&H interview: Champion racehorse trainer Paul Nicholls *H&H Plus*

The reigning champion trainer tells Martha Terry about his big-race contenders, a reformed tearaway and why Bryony Frost might become the first woman to win the Grand National

There’s a hallowed selection of boxes on the right as you enter Paul Nicholls’ yard, which is built halfway up a hill on a dairy farm in the Mendips, Somerset. The stable doors are adorned with green plaques, denoting previous incumbents’ Grade One successes. A whole wall is dedicated to the exploits of Kauto Star who, among his 16 Grade One wins, landed two Gold Cups and five King Georges just over a decade ago.

“At one point, we had these five boxes filled with Denman, Kauto Star, Master Minded, Big Buck’s and Neptune Collonges,” says Paul, reeling off the names of his former stars. “That could never happen again, but the funny thing about these boxes is that we don’t purposefully put the best horses in them but the biggest horses, because they are the biggest boxes. There’s obviously a correlation between th biggest horses winning the top races.”

Martha Terry

H&H features editor

Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.