It is around 3 a.m. in Northern Ireland in the early 2000s as two British soldiers share a dank ditch waiting for the dawn. ‘What will you do when you leave the army, Sir?’ asks Corporal Jordan Wylie. ‘I’m going to train racehorses,’ says Captain Jamie Snowden. ‘And I’m going to make some money and send you a horse to win the Grand Military Gold Cup.’ As an in-demand amateur rider starting with point-to-points at 16, Jamie had already won Sandown’s trophy for services riders. At Sandhurst in 2002 on a day when his platoon were due to endure the rigours of gas attack training, he was booked out instead to ride Folly Road in the historic race when the originally booked rider couldn’t make it following a mortar attack. The pair scored at 14-1 and Jamie went on to partner three more Grand Military Gold Cup winners along with four winners of the other coveted military trophy, the Royal Artillery Gold Cup, all seven of them trained by Paul Nicholls.
At one stage there was a conversation between three young officer friends and a King’s Royal Hussars Colonel: ‘What do you three want out of life?’ The first said he wanted in time to command the regiment. So did the second. Captain Snowden declared: ‘I’ve just won a Grand Military Gold Cup for the Royal Irish Regiment and I want to win one next time in the colours of the KRH.’ Colonel and Captain agreed a plan and so Jamie Snowden, on an army wage, was despatched to spend a year as a pupil assistant to Nicholls. He was to have become assistant to the Ditcheat maestro on completing his Short Service Commission but things had moved on in Somerset and so Nicholls asked Nicky Henderson to take Jamie on in Lambourn. There he stayed for what he describes as ‘three wonderful years’ as assistant at Seven Barrows. Not many get the chance to learn alongside not just one but two champion trainers.
By 2008 Jamie was training in his own right and not long after he purchased Folly House in Upper Lambourn in 2011, ex-Corporal Wylie reappeared, and the pair continued to share the dream of a Grand Military Gold Cup winner. ‘It took us ten years,’ Jamie reflects. ‘There were a few ups, rather more downs. Seconds, fourths, pulled ups and falls. I’d ridden in it five times and won four but my strike rate as a trainer of Grand Military Gold Cups was rather less glorious.’ Finally, with a reformed syndicate including Jordan Wylie and other Cherry Pickers (regimental nickname of the KRH), the Snowden yard celebrated success in the 2023 running of the race when Farceur du Large triumphed with Major Will Kellard in the saddle.
Traditions though don’t pay many bills and the ambitions at Folly House go far wider than one Sandown race for amateurs. I haven’t forgotten the exultant tone of stable jockey Gavin Sheehan after he won the 2023 Coral Gold Cup, the richest handicap outside the Grand National, on their Datsalrightgino. Praising the Snowden team who had won the Paddy Power Gold Cup with Ga Law the year before, he said: ‘Jamie’s getting better and better horses. Everything is on the up.’ Jockey and trainer feed each other’s confidence. ‘We’ve grown up together,’ says Jamie, who has now trained more than 400 winners at Folly House.
‘What will you do when you leave the army, Sir?’ asks Corporal Jordan Wylie. ‘I’m going to train racehorses’
Not many trainers of his generation can list a Cheltenham Festival winner: Jamie has already had two with Present View and You Wear It Well. When I was there last week the yard had that unmistakeable ‘we’re in business’ buzz about it, with film teams arriving, an executive of yard sponsors BetVictor in for breakfast and new owners dropping in before lunch while staff who clearly know exactly what’s expected of them went calmly about their business.
If nothing else, the army teaches team-building. Intriguingly, most senior positions in the yard are held by those whom we used to be allowed to describe as being of the fairer sex. ‘Perhaps he likes being hen-pecked,’ smiled wife Lucy, mother of three racing fanatics and herself clearly very much part of the operation.
For several years now, Folly House has turned out just short of 50 winners from roughly 70 horses. When I said ‘50 this year then’, Jamie made clear that he’s not trying to build a 100-plus super-yard: his focus is on winning better-class races with quality horses. Only four of the current top 20 trainers have a strike rate better than his steady 19 per cent so who might soon be adding to the Folly House tally? He’s thinking of converting Ga Law to a Stayers’ Hurdle candidate. Coming second to potential superstar Young Lion at Newbury his Wendigo finished impressively.
Git Maker, second in last season’s Kim Muir, could go well in the Eider Chase and then there are two retrieval missions. Colonel Harry disappointed in the Coral Gold Cup but will surely win a big one and the trainer still loves bumper winner La Marquise who swallowed her tongue at Newbury last time but should blossom in the spring.
Comments