Jim Old

“My grandfather, who was mayor of Bournemouth for two terms, owned a gents’ outfitters. This chap couldn’t pay his bill one day and offered him a Snaffles print instead. I loved it and from then on I knew I wanted to work with horses. At 13 I was absolutely hooked on the title battle between Lester Piggott and Scobie Breasley, and the writings of John Lawrence, later Lord Oaksey”.

And that is how James Andrew Bertram Old, born 1 September, 1947, got into horse racing.

Dick Francis introduced Jim to trainer Neville Dent in the New Forest and from there he went on to work for both Fred Rimell and Toby Balding, riding six winners as an amateur.

It was as a trainer that Jim was to make his biggest mark, sending out the likes of Cima, Mole Board, Champion Hurdler Collier Bay and Maori Venture.

He trained from Ewell Farm, Dundry, just outside Bristol. However, these stables were ravaged by both fire and the virus - the latter all but crippling his yard - and he moved on to Ditcheat which he had immediately before Paul Nicholls.

After Ditcheat came the final move to Upper Herdswick Farm, Wroughton, near Barbury Castle. It was here that he nursed his wife Anne-Marie - whom he'd married in December 1997 - through a long, unavailing battle with cancer.

Jim, who first took out a trainer's licence in 1972, retired in August, 2014, to Admington in Warwickshire.