Grand National winning trainer Sherwood calls time on 40 year career

Grand National winning trainer Oliver Sherwood has announced his retirement after 40 years.

The hugely popular handler, who has been based in Lambourn for his entire career, cited a dwindling string of horses and a recent battle with cancer as behind his decision to call time on his career.

Sherwood beat the illness after six bouts of chemotherapy but lost his dear friend, Richard Aston, to the disease.

“I started thinking about it around January, February time,” he said.

“The numbers were down, we had a few horses going to the sales and not much to replace them.

“I’d been unwell 18 months ago with cancer and a great friend of ours, Richard Aston, passed away.

“He was diagnosed in February and died in the middle of April, that frightened the daylights out of me.

“I didn’t want to get to 75 and find three-quarters of my life had disappeared and I hadn’t had time to do some of the other things I wanted to do as well.”

The 68-year-old’s greatest moment as a trainer came when Many Clouds won the Aintree Grand National, the longest and most famous national hunt race in Britain, in 2015.

Many Clouds also won the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury as well as two runnings of Cheltenham’s Cotswold Chase, after the second of which he tragically collapsed and died.

Sherwood said: “Many Clouds winning the Grand National was the best day of my sporting life.

“I remember afterwards I had so many telephone interviews from around the world and almost all of them asked the same thing, which was whether I’d always dreamed of winning the National.

“Funnily enough I hadn’t, I always wanted to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and when I told the interviewers that, a lot of them said ‘what’s that?’”

“Now I look back on it, the National is such a worldwide event, it’s quite something to have won it.”

In all, Sherwood sent out almost 1,200 winners, including six Cheltenham Festival champions, and has kept a log book spanning four decades detailing each and every one.

“I’ve kept a winners book from day one,” he said.

“I note the horse, the jockey and the lad or lass who looked after it, so I can go back and look at that.

“You get just as much pride out of winning a race with an average horse as with a wonderfully talented horse.

“Actually getting a horse fit, the act of training, is relatively straightforward nowadays, it’s the getting inside the horse’s head I love and I knew I couldn’t not be involved with horses in the future.”

Sherwood, who plans to spend more time with his son, who lives with his partner in New Zealand, will also be taking up a new role as assistant to fledgling trainer Harry Derham.

Derham, who spent six years working under Paul Nicholls, his uncle, enjoyed a remarkably successful debut season, celebrating 14 winners from 57 runners ahead of a move to a new yard in Boxford.

And Sherwood, who plans to take most of his horses and his staff with him, admits he can’t wait to work with Derham.

“Paul was actually my wife’s first husband, so she’s gone upmarket now,” he said.

“Joking aside, we know the family well and Harry and I get on fantastically.

“He’s so driven and determined and I hope I can use some of my experience to help him.”