Jonny Portman

Captain Tim Forster, a trainer whose love of steeplechasing ran so deep that he wasn't disparaging just of Flat racing but also of hurdling, was a renowned pessimist. His famously gloomy advice to Charlie Fenwick ahead of the American amateur rider going out to partner Ben Nevis in the 1980 Grand National was "keep remounting". And in a sense it would be good advice to aspiring trainers: to keep getting back up even when it seems the odds are against you. As it happened, Fenwick didn't have to heed the...