Most racehorse owners have photographs of their favourite performers dotted around their home – but Ronnie Bartlett can do a bit better.
Nestled in a paddock on his property just outside Glasgow are former Cheltenham Festival heroes Zemsky, 22, and Rathvinden, 17, enjoying their well-earned retirements having given their all on the racecourse during celebrated careers.
“They all come home to me after their racing days are over,” says the softly-spoken Bartlett, Chairman of Albert Bartlett, the potato business established by his grandfather in 1948. “It’s lovely going out in the evening and giving them a carrot.
“When they’ve won the kind of races they have and provided so much pleasure, they’ve got a ticket from me forever.”
Bartlett fell in love with horses as a child, hunting from the age of eight with the Linlithgow and Stirlingshire Hunt, later riding in point-to-points and training for a period having invested in his first pointer while still a teenager.
It was his cousins in Ballymoney – Albert moved the family from Northern Ireland to Scotland in 1947 – who introduced Bartlett to a longstanding ally in Ian Ferguson.
A noted horseman and trainer, Ferguson supplied Zemsky and Rathvinden to Bartlett, along with a popular grey gelding who lit up the track under the tutelage of Nicky Henderson.
Simonsig won eight races under Rules in the blue and white diamond silks. A bold-jumping superstar who scored twice in top company at the Cheltenham Festival, he captured the Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle (then run under the Neptune Investment Management banner) in 2012 and the Arkle Trophy a year later.
Bartlett says: “I’d been having runners at Cheltenham since the 1980s. Rawyards Brig [trained by Ferguson] was fancied for the Foxhunter in 1991 but unseated Paddy Graffin at the open ditch second time round.
“Simonsig (left) was my first Grade 1 winner. My wife sometimes thinks that I’m not showing much emotion, but I remember when he won the Neptune, coming down the hill he was travelling so well, I just thought goodness me, is it really going to happen today? He had some ability but unfortunately legs of glass.
“He scoped dirty after winning the Arkle, so it was quite an achievement. Simonsig was a great horse – one in a million, really. He also won the Champion Bumper at Fairyhouse and other big races. Sadly, we lost him at Cheltenham in 2016 and I remember thinking I’m never going to get another one as good as him.”
Watching a replay of Simonsig’s brilliant Neptune win, one can’t help but draw similarities to the performance of Ballyburn in the same race last year, when Willie Mullins trained the first five home.
Ballyburn, owned in partnership with football agent David Manasseh, was another to pass through the Ferguson academy, bought by Bartlett privately from good friend Wilson Dennison.
Having carried all before him over hurdles, Ballyburn has embarked on a chasing career this season, scoring impressively at Punchestown before being outpointed by Sir Gino at Kempton over Christmas, although two miles on a sharp track looked far from ideal for the strapping Flemensfirth gelding.
“I don’t think Ballyburn turned up at Kempton,” reflects Bartlett. “The other horse won fair and square on the day, but our horse didn’t travel with the same authority as he has previously.
“The breeding tells you he’s going to go three miles. Touch wood if things stay good, a great goal for me would be to run him in the Gold Cup next year.
“He’s still got a lot to learn. If you’re going to go a longer distance, he’ll need to learn to relax a wee bit better. You don’t want to be burning too much energy.
“I’m disappointed we haven’t got the Turners [over two and a half miles] as a Grade 1. That would have been the race we’d have gone for but now it’s a handicap. We’ll learn a lot more after his next outing at Leopardstown whether we should stay at two miles or move up to three miles.”
While Ballyburn could even bypass Cheltenham in favour of a trip to Aintree, Banbridge, trained by Joseph O’Brien, has a range of Festival options following his dramatic success in the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day.
Front-running French raider Il Est Francais and James Reveley had established a clear lead turning for home but as the leader began to tire, Banbridge was produced late on the scene by Paul Townend to hit the front after jumping the final fence, taking the prize by a length and a quarter on his first chase start over three miles.
“The Kelvin-Hugheses [owners of Il Est Francais] are friends and I felt for them,” Bartlett says. “Some days you get beat and you’re well beat. Their horse produced some display of jumping and pace. Between four and three out we were gaining ground and I thought we’d get closer to him. Between the second last and the last I knew we had a chance.
“We ran him in a three-mile hurdle at Aintree when he was over the top. He’s one of these horses that if the ground is good, we’ll run him, and if it isn’t we won’t.
“He was jumping well while Il Est Francais was tearing up the track. Paul gave him a great ride and the horse came up at the right time. He’s entered for three races [at Cheltenham] in March. We’ll look for the best ground and I would say the Ryanair or Gold Cup is more likely than the Champion Chase.”
He adds: “What made Kempton really special was my three grandchildren were there, along with my daughter Haley and her husband [former Wales and West Brom forward Hal Robson-Kanu]. The kids weren’t allowed in the paddock, so we watched on a big screen nearby – they were all so excited at the end!”
For a man involved in the best races and meetings the sport has to offer, Bartlett understands the plight of those further down racing’s pyramid and is keen to offer support where he can.
Owners are the bread and butter of our industry
Albert Bartlett sponsors a Triple Crown series of 12 hurdle races, with qualifiers in Ireland and Britain, for horses rated up to 120, culminating in a €100,000 final on the first day of the Punchestown Festival in April.
Bartlett says: “We’ve been fortunate that we’ve had a few good horses that have won Grade 1s. But there are plenty of people out there that have been in the industry a long time and aren’t getting much of a return.
“The guys at the top of any sport are always doing well and some of our top trainers are falling over horses, but if you’re halfway down the ladder it’s not the same. The Jockeys’ Cup isn’t a bad idea, but we must look after people at the lower end.
“Owners are the bread and butter of our industry – without them we wouldn’t have a sport and we need to look after them as well. We need to make it work much better for the trainers and owners because we’ve all got middle-tier horses or worse.
“For these owners and trainers, we need to ensure they get a decent payday, hence what we’re doing with the Albert Bartlett Triple Crown. You can have a good horse and a good day out – but for me it’s all about having a winner.
“I think we need to keep everyone at the table, and I’d like to see the industry working more closely together, particularly Britain and Ireland.”
He adds: “We’re standing at the edge of the cliff just now and we have to very careful as an industry that we don’t fall off the edge.
“I don’t think we’ve got too may racetracks, but we do have too many races in my opinion. There’s got to be the opportunity for courses to get weekend racing and stage family days.
“We need to try and engage younger people and attract the next generation. If you go racing in certain parts of the country, the average age [of racegoers] will be over 60.”
Bartlett is the only one from his immediate family with the racing bug – “my dad and two older brothers have no interest in horses and wouldn’t even know if I’d won a race at Cheltenham!” – and enjoyed training under permit until having to focus on his career with the family firm, one of the biggest players in the domestic potato industry.
“I’m now the Chairman and my son [Alex] is the CEO,” he says. “My brothers and a cousin were in the business and at one point we all had 25% each. Between the four of us we took it from a small regional Scottish player to a national business.
Cheltenham is the best week of the year
“We expanded overseas and went to America and the Middle East, but now we’ve decided to focus on the UK. We make products in the frozen market and supply to Australia and the US. But we want to play at home now.
“I like the product to do the talking. We don’t want to cheat the customer. The products must be consistent so whatever season you buy them in, they’ve got to taste the same. When you buy Coca-Cola anywhere in the world, it tastes like Coca-Cola. That is our goal.”
On the racing front, the goal is to win one of the championship contests at the Cheltenham Festival to add to his already impressive haul of big-race triumphs.
“I’m not a gambler – all I want to do is win,” Bartlett says. “I never backed Simonsig once and I’ve never had a penny on Ballyburn, although I did take the 33-1 on Banbridge for the King George!
“Cheltenham is the best week of the year. When you’re standing in the paddock and looking at the quality of horses around you, it’s amazing.”
He adds: “With horses, you’ve got to be 100% or nothing – that’s just the way it is. It’s about understanding the sport.
“Whenever I have a horse in training, I’ll never put the trainer under pressure to run in a race. I only want the horse to run when the trainer’s completely happy with it.”
Here’s hoping for some happy trainers – and horses – come the second week in March.
Flummoxed by Festival race changes
Ronnie Bartlett has enjoyed three victories in the National Hunt Chase, the oldest race at the Cheltenham Festival, courtesy of Rathvinden (2018), Galvin (2021) and Stattler (2022).
He admits to being baffled by the decision to change the 3m6f contest into a handicap no longer confined to amateur riders while also expressing his disappointment that the Grade 1 Turners Novices’ Chase over two and a half miles has been replaced with a Grade 2 limited novice handicap.
“I’m lost,” Bartlett says. “The National Hunt Chase has so much history – I cannot see the benefits [of the changes]. They’re trying to do the best thing for the meeting, but I don’t see why it should be a handicap. I’m a great believer that we should keep the amateur level alive.
“The Cheltenham Festival is a championship meeting. It’s like the European Cup Final and it should be about championship races. You want to see the best two-mile horse, best two-and-a-half-mile horse and best three-mile horse at level weights.
“If the Turners had remained a Grade 1, we would have run Ballyburn – that would have been a certainty.
“The Cross Country Chase [which becomes a handicap] is great for horses that are over the hill slightly but retain some ability. It could be the race for Galvin as he may not carry as much weight as in the past.”
Albert Bartlett has backed the Grade 1 three-mile novices’ hurdle at the Festival since 2008, retaining its title while other sponsors have come and gone over the same period.
“A lot of farmers train horses and a lot of people have horses who are involved in agriculture,” explains Bartlett. “There’s a good link to what we do. It’s been a good relationship with Cheltenham.
“It’s a business for us. We monitor how much the race has cost us, what exposure the company has had and how much we’re talked about on TV and in the press.
“The deal has to work for the business and we’re happy with it. It’s like everything else – if you get a bit out of sport, you need to put a bit back.”
