Innovation motivates Paul & Oliver Cole - the ‘joint masters’ of Whatcombe
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By Alysen Miller
“All happy families are alike,” as the saying goes. When Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote these words in 1877, Queen Victoria was on the throne, Alexander Graham Bell was installing the world's first commercial telephone service in Ontario, Canada, and Silvio had just won the Derby under Fred Archer. But it would be another 143 years before the British Horseracing Authority gave formal recognition to the outsize role of harmonious familial relationships in training racehorses. Now, thanks to a new initiative introduced in 2020, the father-and-son team of Paul and Oliver Cole can finally enjoy equal billing at the top of the training ticket as one of the first partnerships to train under a joint licence in the UK.
It’s a formula that paid immediate dividends as the Coles became the first joint-licence holders to register a win in the UK when the striking grey Valpolicella vanquished her rivals on her debut in June 2020. They followed that up a fortnight later with a winner at Royal Ascot, courtesy of stable stalwart Highland Chief. They also enjoyed handicap success in the Cambridgeshire—traditionally one of the most competitive handicaps of the year—with Majestic Dawn. “The most exciting thing was getting that first winner,” says Oliver Cole, speaking from the family’s Oxfordshire base. “I like to point out that it was a very old owner, Christopher Wright, who happened to be the owner that day. He’s been a great friend and was very supportive of me taking up the joint licence.”
The move by the BHA to accept joint licence applications, mirroring a successful scheme introduced in Australia several years ago, can be seen as part of a gradual breaking down of the barriers to entry to a career that has often been perceived as the preserve of a handful of a select few, often independently wealthy individuals.
“First of all, women couldn’t have a licence. And then you couldn’t have a joint licence. All sorts of restrictions have eased off,” says Cole père. Paul Cole is, of course, one of Britain’s most successful trainers, with multiple Classic and Royal Ascot winners to his name. For his son Oliver, the fruits of this success meant growing up within the rarefied atmosphere of a top-class racing operation. “My earliest memories are from eight upwards. I was spoiled in that Dad was quite successful at that stage; and for the next 15 to 20 years, he was top of his game. It was great fun. There was a lot of action—a great atmosphere.”
“It’s a glamorous business and the people in it are glamourous,” says Paul, modestly. “They’re just looking for a little bit more out of life than a lot of other people are. It’s exciting.” Mingling with owners and going on international trips was part and parcel of this upbringing (missing school to attend the Melbourne Cup was a particular highlight). So was it any surprise that Oliver chose to follow in his father’s footsteps? “What else would I do?” he shrugs. “That was the thing I was interested in. The thrill and the buzz are huge.”
“It’s a natural progression,” agrees Paul. “Some people might want to be a surgeon, or a pilot, or something like that. But if you’ve got a father that’s already got a set-up, you’re more likely to follow your family into what you know. You’ve already got all the connections in the business. And connections are important.”
Oliver is Paul’s middle son. The eldest, Alexander, initially showed no interest in racing but now manages Jim and Fitri Hay’s racing operations. The youngest, Mark, is a gamer. But it was Oliver who always seemed destined to follow his father into the game.
It’s certainly not hard to understand the lure of the training life for Cole, particularly on a crisp morning in March when the spring sun is stippling the trees, and every blade of grass on their 450-acre property seems bathed in a vernal glow. From this base at the historic Whatcombe estate, nestled in the idyllic Oxfordshire countryside and criss-crossed with private gallops in a variety of surfaces, Paul and Oliver currently oversee a boutique selection of some 40-50 racehorses for a number of high-profile owners, although there is stabling for up to 120. The property has been in the family since 1986, having previously been in the hands of fellow Classic-winning trainers Dick Dawson and Arthur Budgett. If one looks with careful eyes as the sun rises over the Lambourn Valley below, one can almost imagine that little has changed since the Late Roman period, when the land was cultivated for farming. If this ancient history feels close to the surface, signs of the more recent past are also in evidence: Visitors to the yard are greeted by a statue of Snurge, the first horse to win more than £1 million in prize money; while the stabling is presided over by the great Generous—the last of six Derby winners to be sent out by Paul in 1991.
Such a lifestyle was never a given. “I started with nothing,” explains Paul. “Which is not a disadvantage. It’s an advantage. It instils in you that you want to get on in life, and you know how hard it is to get on, and therefore you make just that bit more effort all the time.” It was a desire to provide for his future family that inspired Paul’s single-minded focus in the early years of his career. “If you want to get married and have children, and give the children holidays, and perhaps send them to school, it takes a long time to get your feet on the ground. But it’s something that you know you have to do. I was brought up with the normal insecurities that families have. I like to think I brought my children up with total security. They never needed to worry about where the next meal was coming from. And now, as you can see, we’ve got a wonderful training establishment. It would be difficult to better it.”
Oliver is the first to admit that he is lucky. But he is certainly not alone. The reality is that without family backing, the potential avenues for younger trainers coming into the sport would be considerably fewer. Paul rejects the idea that only those born into racing families have a pathway to a career in training: “There’s no set route to come in. Mick Channon made a few quid playing football—not as much as they make now! So he started [via] that route. People come in from all sorts of different ways. You’ve got to want to do it, of course.” However, he acknowledges the advantages inherent in having a Classic-winning trainer for a father: “If Oliver wanted to go training, he’s got to start from scratch somewhere,” explains Paul. “That’s another yard, accommodation, gallops. There are lots of worries, lots of snags, lots of hurdles. This way, he hasn’t got to get out and prove himself or be compared with me.”
“I think it’s very difficult for some of these young people,” agrees Oliver. “It’s not just the training. The pressures that go with it must be immense. One of the best things about working together is that I’ve got someone to fall back on in case the pressures get too much.”
In many ways, the introduction of joint licensing has merely formalised a practice that has been in existence for as long as racehorses have been trained, whereby sons and, especially, wives serve as de facto co-trainers to their parents or spouses, though often with little or no recognition. Tellingly, among the first to snap up the new joint licence, along with the Coles, were Simon Crisford and his son Ed, and husband-and-wife team Daniel and Claire Kübler, while five-time champion trainer John Gosden and his son Thady are expecting the ink be dry on their new, joint licence in time for the start of season. . “It did need recognising that there are other people seriously involved in the success [of a training yard], says Paul.”
“My mother is a big help around here,” acknowledges Oliver, as the family matriarch wrangles his two daughters in the next room.
Was that the motivation for taking out a joint licence? “You can’t carry on being an assistant forever,” explains Oliver. “You’ve got to make a name for yourself and if it happens that, in the future, I have to go out on my own one day, people will know that I’ve done it.”
Adding Oliver’s name to the licence has also allowed the Coles to expand their pool of potential owners. “Lots of young people wouldn’t want to have a horse with me, but they want to have a horse with Oliver,” says Paul. Of particular benefit during lockdown has been Oliver’s innate generational facility with social media. Owners who have not been able to visit their horses have been provided with GoPro footage of their gallops once a week, shot from a moving quad bike by Oliver. “I think one of the biggest positives from lockdown is that we had a lot of time to work out the GoPro stuff,” he says. He has also invested in a drone in order to shoot sweeping, Francis Ford Coppola-esque aerials of the property, which he proudly shows off on his phone.
Another consequence of lockdown for yards up and down the country is that the stable staff have had to form their own support bubble. Many of them have not seen their families for the best part of a year. How do the Coles keep morale up? “We have a great community of staff here. They tend to stay here for quite a while, and I suppose it’s just a question of keeping them happy. We all like the ethos of a fun place with happy horses,” says Oliver. “And we are a smaller yard, which helps. We have some great people out there, some quite funny ones. They’re friends. You go out there and you can have a laugh. We have a WhatsApp group that all the staff are on and we always talk to each other on that, whether it’s ‘Well done with the winners,’ or, ‘Amelia, you rode really well this morning.’ It’s a really good tool.
Spring is the time for making plans. As the Coles look ahead to the coming season and beyond, they both agree the main effort is to ensure that the business will continue to provide for the next generation. “We’ve just got to get through the next couple of years before we make any big decisions, but our main aim is to fill the yard,” says Oliver.
“This is a big place to run. And if you haven’t got a certain amount of horses, it’s quite a struggle,” agrees Paul. “There’s a lot of finance that goes behind keeping it going. You’ve got to think about that as well. We have diversified a little bit.” (In addition to the main yard, there is a stud division and some rental properties.)
For the time being, the two seem more than happy to continue to work together as a team, with no signs of handing over the reins in prospect just yet. “We got off to an amazing start last year. We were lucky with some very good horses, and long may it continue,” says Oliver.
At this, Paul sits back in his chair and permits himself a satisfied smile. “Despite the hard work and uncertainty, the first 20 years of my career and life were fantastic. Nice people, nice places, nice things. The owners were nice, the horses worked out. So no complaints!” He grins. “Everything’s gone slightly to plan.”