CAN a trainer in fourth place in the championship standings, with a Grand National winner and a frequently updated list of big-race success on the roll of honour, and a world record that is extended with every victory, be said to fly under the radar?

If that trainer is Venetia Williams, the answer is yes.

“I prefer to let the horses do the talking,” she says, never a reluctant interviewee but a careful, thoughtful one, given to deflection and self-deprecation despite her achievements.

Mon Mome won her a Grand National, Teeton Mill a King George VI Chase and a Hennessy, three marquee moments among many that have contributed to a career tally of more than 1,600 winners, making Williams the all-time leading female jump trainer in Britain and Ireland - and by extension the world.

Eight of those winners have come at the Cheltenham Festival, and spearheading her challenge this spring is leading Gold Cup contender L’Homme Presse, winner of the 2022 Grade 1 Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase and impressive in victory at Lingfield on his seasonal reappearance after a year’s absence.

Eight festival winners is a decent return without being stellar, a sort of under-the-radar score, and Williams plays to that.

“I think you have to be happy with any number of Festival winners. It’s hard enough winning one,” she says.

“I appreciate them all, but the first one was quite special, Samakaan in the [1990] Grand Annual. He still holds the track record for the extended two miles.”

Further examination of that result reveals a factor that will not be repeated, either by Cheltenham or Williams. The ground was officially good to firm.

“Cheltenham would never let racing take place on fast ground these days, and I wouldn’t run a horse on that ground now. You learn from your mistakes.”

Perception

Ground conditions have become central to the perception of Williams’s training methods. Her horses have a reputation for excelling in the short afternoons of midwinter, leading many commentators to short-cut their way to the notion that her yard is merely home to a bunch of merry mudlarks that can only strike when the mud is flying.

That would be a simple conclusion, but the reality is even simpler. Williams only runs her horses when ‘soft’ appears in the going description, so when they win they invariably do so in testing conditions.

It is design rather than necessity. If that straightforward explanation turns perceived wisdom on its head, there is also much more to her Cheltenham pedigree than those eight winners.

Williams was assistant to the Festival master John Edwards in the late 1980s, the time of the great dual Champion Chase winner Pearlyman and Yahoo, who so nearly spoiled the Desert Orchid party in that unforgettable 1989 Gold Cup.

“I think there were six of us shouting for Yahoo and 60,000 screaming for Desert Orchid,” she says, a little ruefully. “I used to ride out for John in the school holidays and then I came back to be his assistant for five or six years.

“I was so lucky to be in that environment, so much success at Cheltenham, and I just tried to absorb everything I could.”

It was the continuation of an education that also included time spent with Barry Hills, Martin Pipe and Colin Hayes in Australia, none of them trainers who have needed a wristwatch to know the time of day.

Less pertinent, perhaps, but just as memorable was a spell in California riding trackwork before life became more serious.

“I went out there three times, to Santa Anita and Del Mar,” she says. “I was 22, had worked for Gavin Pritchard-Gordon in Newmarket for three years, and it was a lot of fun.

“Such a beautiful place, such a great lifestyle. I was riding work for John Fulton, who won the first Japan Cup [Mairzy Doates, 1981] and is now a bloodstock agent in Argentina, and John Gosden had a barn on the backstretch at the time.

Great time

“There was a whole gang of ex-pats out there and we had a great time. I learned to water-ski, those were good days.”

Youthful wistfulness aside, there was never really any prospect of Williams, born into a hunting family in Cornwall, turning her attention to the flat. Jump racing was in her blood, and she rode as an amateur while with Edwards until that angle came to an abrupt end after a fall at Worcester in April 1988. Very fortunately, it was the only thing to come to an abrupt end.

“I was very lucky,” she says. “I was on a 33/1 shot and we were going to win, in front at the last, but he met it on a long stride, landed on the hurdle and fired me headfirst into the ground.

“Sky, grass, sky, grass, as usual, and then when I stopped rolling I could breathe, I could talk, but I couldn’t feel anything below my neck. In the 10 minutes it took for the sensation of pins and needles to return to my legs the word ‘paralysis’ had begun to dawn on me.”

Williams had broken the ‘hangman’s bone’ in her neck, the C2 vertebra. Any displacement of the fracture could have meant paralysis or even death.

“Yes, it changed my perspective on life. You do take inspiration from that type of close shave. I clearly remember the relief of taking off the surgical collar after months inside it.”

Family farm

Training was the future, and she started out in November 1995 from a yard with six boxes on the family farm in Herefordshire, snuggled within the curving arm of the River Wye a few miles from the Welsh border.

Williams built up the yard as she built up her career and, aptly for someone who is renowned for driving like Verstappen - “Training racehorses is a very time-consuming job, and I have to utilise my time as best I can, so I try to get the driving out of the way as quickly as possible,” she says, with a grin - she made a fast start.

Within three years Williams had broken through into the big time on the back of the tiny but mighty mare Lady Rebecca, who won seven times at Cheltenham including three editions of the Grade 1 Cleeve Hurdle, and the aforementioned Teeton Mill, who came out of hunter chases to win the Hennessy, the King George and the Ascot Chase within three months in 1998-99.

“I hadn’t really gained any perspective at that point,” she says. “I thought it was normal - I ended up fourth in the championship after just four years. Perhaps the job was a bit easier back then . . .”

It has never been easy, but the ever-elegant Williams is still vigorously taking the fight to what we must probably call the mega-stables that currently dominate the landscape.

Hers may appear an idyllic, bucolic existence deep in the green fields, the yard strewn with peacocks and peahens, a high-end motor or two in the drive, a sensible aversion to social media, 35 winners in November and December at a 30% strike-rate, but none of that comes by accident, except possibly the peacocks.

Absurd sums

Williams does not have owners with the bottomless pockets required to spend absurd sums on point-to-point graduates - her Grade 1 winner Royale Pagaille belongs to Rich Ricci, but he is the exception rather than the rule - and so she has to do the recruitment herself, something she describes as “looking outside the box” at the Deauville Arqana sales in France.

“I find them a little more affordable over there. I buy most of them on spec, you have to speculate to accumulate, otherwise nothing happens, does it.

“So it’s my money and I make the choices myself, although I have an agent in France, Guy Petit, who I’ve worked with for years. I feel I can get value, although that’s becoming harder to find as well.”

Williams certainly does get value. Betfair Chase winner Royale Pagaille cost €70,000, Champion Chase runner-up Funambule Sivola fetched €50,000, last year’s Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup winner Chambard cost just €40,000 - a bargain for a Festival winner - but she can’t take the credit for yard flagship L’Homme Presse, bought by his owner Andy Edwards.

Mention of his name is the signal that as ever, at this time of year, the conversation will flirt with this and that but always come back home to Cheltenham.

Irish domination

Williams is not particularly exercised by the recent Irish domination - “It’s cyclical” - and doesn’t consider that the great four-day extravaganza overly overshadows the rest of the season, pointing instead to the benefit of the enormous excitement generated by the long build-up.

Like so many of us, Williams can chart her life by the Cheltenham Gold Cup. We have heard about Yahoo in 1989, and then 10 years later she took Teeton Mill there as second-favourite only for a career-ending injury to wreck his chance. There will be more than six people cheering for L’Homme Presse and he is unlikely to be second-favourite, but there is still a point of symmetry to be found.

It’s the oldest, softest, laziest question in the book, but sometimes a silly question draws a sensible answer. How does L’Homme Presse compare to Teeton Mill? Williams has the radar on for that one, has the answer ready, exactly the type of answer one might expect from her.

“His ability,” she says. Oh, she lets her horses do the talking all right. And they do it brilliantly.