Whether or not trainers should be paid for giving interviews live on TV is a divisive question yet there is no doubting their value to racing devotees. For Rupert Swallow, the zeal shown by one member of the training fraternity proved the catalyst for his jump into ownership.
Swallow, a venture capitalist who spent over 30 years in the insurance industry, had only been involved in syndicates, notably Phil Cunningham’s Rebel Racing, prior to the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, which was closed to spectators due to the pandemic.
That year’s Hunters’ Chase (previously known as the Foxhunters’) was won by Porlock Bay, trained by Will Biddick, whose eloquence on television in the aftermath of victory encouraged Swallow to get in touch.
“Jump racing was always my passion,” explains Swallow, talking via Zoom from his home office in front of Ed Byrne’s stunning black and white photograph of brilliant chaser Pendil, dual winner of the King George VI Chase, who was owned by his mother, Cynthia.
“When my company, Capsicum Re, was sold in 2020, one of the things I really wanted to do was see if I could get more involved in National Hunt racing. That didn’t take on any substantial structure until I watched the Covid Cheltenham.
“I saw Will on TV and he displayed this incredible enthusiasm for winning. I looked him up and wrote to him, explaining that I wanted to get involved in the jumps game and would like to meet him.
“Will didn’t contact me for a week or two – likely he was busy enjoying his success! – but I did hear from him eventually and we’ve since become fast friends.”
With Biddick on board along with bloodstock agent Ed Bailey and lawyer Andrew Holderness, plus Swallow’s wife Dee, The Pendil Partnership was born.
Keen to utilise the experience of his co-owners, Swallow set out to learn all he could about buying jumps prospects before embarking on his ownership adventure with 14-times champion jumps trainer Paul Nicholls.
He says: “Will’s main business is breaking horses – he breaks a lot of Paul’s store horses and trains his own point-to-point horses using Ditcheat’s facilities, so that’s the connection with Paul.
“Anyone who’s made a few quid could probably turn up at Paul’s any time and buy themselves a decent horse, but the way I looked at it was when I arrived it didn’t matter whose yard it was, I wanted to be regarded as someone who’d spent time learning the business.
“She was the absolute standout, an amazing mover – she had star quality from the start.”
“Rather than rocking up and saying, ‘Here’s a quarter of a million quid, can I buy a horse please?’, I decided to source store horses and look at it as a sort of undergraduate course, a university degree in jump racing.
“I started by learning how to look at a horse, its conformation, how it walks, trying to identify good horses when they are unbroken stores – Will and Ed helped on that side. I also wanted to understand the dam and sire lines.”
Swallow’s first trip to the Goffs Land Rover Sale was in 2021 – he sold his McLaren sports car pre-auction to boost his budget, swapping one type of horsepower for another – and came back with Il Pino and Regatta De Blanc, purchased for a combined sum of €107,000. Both started off in the point-to-point sphere, their owner keen to “validate” his purchases before racing under Rules, with each winning at the first time of asking.
Having seen at first hand the competitive nature of the store market, Swallow vowed to return with gusto the following year and duly did so, spending €120,000 on a daughter of Flemensfirth.
“It was a lot more than we budgeted for,” Swallow recalls. “But if you really want to buy the horse you want, you need the firepower.
“She was the absolute standout, an amazing mover – she had star quality from the start.”
Jubilee Alpha has indeed shown star quality on the track, following a debut bumper success at Wincanton with a fine second in the Grade 2 mares’ bumper at Aintree’s Grand National meeting last April.
After an eye-catching third on her hurdling debut at Newbury in November, Jubilee Alpha recorded an easy victory in a Listed contest at Taunton before travelling to Windsor – her owner’s local track – for a novices’ hurdle at the Berkshire Winter Million meeting. She justified favouritism in decisive fashion to set up a tilt at the Grade 2 Dawn Run Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival this month.
It’s been a remarkable start for The Pendil Partnership, with multiple winners and a live Festival contender in their ranks, yet Swallow – who has subsequently purchased two more horses at the sales – points out that life is rarely straightforward when it comes to owning racehorses.
He says: “The ownership experience is encapsulated in these five horses. One store horse we bought won’t ever race – even a wind op couldn’t solve his issues. One horse has done a tendon and is out for the year. Another horse has various problems with poor feet and ulcers. In the middle of all that is Jubilee Alpha, our diamond.
“My expectations are tempered by the fact I know what a cauldron it will be at the Festival and how tough the environment will be. But I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking this could actually happen.
“Regatta De Blanc won at Cheltenham’s hunter chase evening meeting last year, so Dee and I have led a horse through that famous channel into the winner’s enclosure, but it would be totally different to have that experience at the Festival.”
With his financial nous and experience of investing in start-ups, Swallow saw an opportunity to create a business out of his love of horses through micro-ownership, which also picked up on his passion for mentoring young people.
It led to him leasing two of the partnership’s horses to a syndicate last season. While there was a fair take-up, the final numbers didn’t add up.
“The long and short of it is although we sold around 400 shares, we really needed to sell 4,000 shares to make it financially viable,” Swallow says. “I anticipated that young people would buy their share and use social media to provide the momentum, but it just didn’t happen.
“It’s a little hard for me to talk about. Being a venture capitalist, you get used to failure. Quite often you learn a lot more through the failures than through the successes. I believed it was for the benefit of jump racing so was disappointed it didn’t work out. I might try again – never say never.”
Thankfully, Jubilee Alpha has enjoyed more successes than failures in her short career and her ownership group will be hoping their star mare enjoys more luck at Prestbury Park than the horse after whom their partnership is named.
Trained by Fred Winter, Pendil – who resided on the famed ‘Millionaire’s Row’ at Uplands stable in Lambourn alongside fellow stars Bula and Crisp – won the 1972 Arkle Challenge Trophy but suffered bad luck in the Gold Cup for the next two years under Richard Pitman.
In 1973 he looked to have the race as his mercy – “this fence between Pendil and victory” declared Peter O’Sullevan in commentary – only to be mugged by The Dikler late on, while a year later he was brought down three out by faller High Ken when still travelling well.
Is there unfinished business for the Swallow family at Cheltenham? Perhaps.
“It’s part of my mother’s folklore,” Swallow says. “Pitman admits he got it wrong in ’73 going to the front as early as he did, while the next year he positioned himself behind a well-known faller and was brought down.
“My mother had received an IRA death threat on the horse just before the race so when he came down, she thought he had been shot! It’s quite a gnarly background.
“I was very young when he was winning so I don’t remember it but jump racing has always been a bubbling theme in my life.
“Mum still loves her racing – she’s in her mid-80s and quite frail but still sharp as a tack.”
Win, lose or draw at the Festival, Swallow is relishing the ride with Jubilee Alpha and may even breed from her when the time is right. At present, he’s simply enjoying life as a racehorse owner.
“I hadn’t anticipated the friendships and relationships we’ve built around ownership,” Swallow says. “I’ve been amazed at how friendly all the connections are that you meet – it’s been heart-warming.
“I was also unprepared for the emotional connection with the horses themselves and the experiences they were giving us. After the first couple of winners, I was completely overwhelmed!”
He adds: “There are lots of trials and tribulations to being a racehorse owner, but I don’t feel any of those are created by the system – they’re just learning points in the journey.”
