'You cannot rely on racing' - Ann Duffield on how small trainers stay afloat

The Front Runner is Chris Cook's morning email exclusively for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers, available here as a free sample.

In Monday's email Chris reflects on the struggles of smaller horse trainer yards – and subscribers can get more great insight, tips and racing chat from Chris every Monday to Friday.

Members' Club Ultimate subscribers who aren't yet signed up for The Front Runner should click here to sign up and start receiving emails immediately!

Not a Members' Club Ultimate subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content, including tipping from the likes of Pricewise and Paul Kealy, all the big interviews and features, daily comment and news analysis.

To survive as a small trainer, you might need to run a couple of other businesses on the side. That's the lesson from some time the Front Runner spent over the weekend, shooting the breeze with Ann Duffield, newly back among the headlines after winning the Swinton with N'Golo.

At her Sun Hill Farm in North Yorkshire, Duffield also has a sideline in rehabbing horses from other yards or even other sports. And she also has a collection of lodges and cottages that are let out to holidaymakers.

"Lots of people, when I first started the holiday business, said: 'Oh, she'll pack up now. She's got something else more reliable.' They don't realise that the reason I do all these things is so I can train.

"I do other things because I have to. I love training. But it's important for me to train for the right people under the right circumstances."

These thoughts partly derive from the odd bad experience Duffield has had along the way. But they also reflect a pragmatic acceptance of the way things are now, with so many owners inclining towards big-name trainers, leaving the rest to work hard to stay afloat.

"Lots of trainers have other business interests. It's just very evident that you cannot and should not rely on racing unless you're a really well established, big business.

"It's a bit like farming, like many industries. It's a problem for racing because if grassroots trainers weren't there, people would really miss them. They're needed, there's plenty of horses that do well in smaller yards.

"And I think that's why the BHA are much more open to changing the way they used to do things. They're allowing dual licences and sharing of yards."

Duffield has been a beneficiary, part of her property being leased out to Phil Makin. "If I'd tried what I'm doing maybe 15 years ago, they'd have been telling me to put more roads in and spend £30,000 doing this and that. Now, they're much more realistic and that is going to help smaller trainers to survive. We can pool our resources and share costs. To some extent, we can even share staff, we can give each other a hand. It's very important that they do that."

And she also has a newish assistant trainer in Paddy Neville, more or less a chance addition to the operation after travelling over from Ireland with some horses he intended to train himself. "He'd been let down with some stables in Middleham, so I said while we wait, bring them here and we can at least get them fit here.

"We got on so well, I said: 'Why don't you be my assistant until we know what's happening?' We've thoroughly enjoyed it. It's lovely to have jumpers back on the yard. I personally wouldn't have gone out and bought a load of jumpers but they're here."

Among them is N'Golo, bought for £14,500 by owner Kevin Jardine at Goffs in October, having hit a bit of a losing run for Willie Mullins. Winning a big race with a Mullins castoff is an achievement that appears on few CVs. With N'Golo, it was all about helping him recover from a number of "niggly" problems and Duffield's rehab facilities did the trick.

She is especially proud of her cold, salt-water treadmill - "an amazing piece of kit" - which has been on the site for seven years. The benefits are articulated in detail on her website but essentially it promotes faster recovery from a range of athletic injuries.

Marie's Rock is among the horses to have benefited from Duffield's rehab facilities, as was noted by Nicky Henderson after she won the Mares' Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. The mare is now back on the premises for another working holiday.

Having beaten 15 rivals by six lengths to one of the best handicap hurdle pots of the season, what now for N'Golo, who is still young enough to have more to offer? "I think he's going to be one of those that can go on the Flat or over hurdles and even over fences.

"There's lots of options for him and he's in very good form. He'll have to have a break at some point but we'll keep him going for the time being. There's a couple of races we quite like the look of at York and there's the Galway Hurdle."

In a way, it is only justice that Duffield now has her name on the Swinton roll of honour, as she bought the 2018 winner, the very popular and now much-missed Silver Streak, when he was a yearling. "He was a lovely horse and always going to make a hurdler, he was a really nice jumper."

It so happened that Silver Streak's third hurdles run for Duffield, at Wetherby in October 2016, came in a race where the eventual winner, a 20-1 shot, was allowed a huge lead by the other riders and never came back. Silver Streak ran on into a terribly unlucky second and the owner decided to sell, so that was that.

Sun Hill sounds like a happy ship as discussions continue about how best to acknowledge Neville's contribution. "Either we'll have a dual licence or I'd have to further separate the yard to let him have a bit of his own. There is room here.

"Sometimes training can be very isolating for a trainer. You're on your own, you have owners giving you a bit of grief. Here, it's really quite nice. Paddy and I get on really well, Phil and Sammy Jo Bell are great. It's just a really nice atmosphere."

Read these next:

No let-up in quality as Irish Guineas meeting and Temple Stakes lead the way

Ebro River bidding to put himself back in Royal Ascot picture on Chantilly raid

The Front Runner is our latest email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday